Kissing in Combat
by katie4cheer
Summary: Duncan, a young US soldier during WW2, finds Courtney, an orphaned Jew, in her home after Kristallnacht. They soon build a relationship in his army camp. But as Duncan's infantry leaves the camp to move further into Germany, will they ever meet again?
1. Don't Fucking Think

**Duncan POV**

Duncan creeps along the thick forests of northern Germany with a Type 100 machine gun in his dirty hands and his brothers all around him. Well, they weren't his brothers, since they had once been complete strangers before World War II started, but now they felt like it. After all, they had all been through so much together… so much misery, torture, despair, and horror like nobody could even imagine. Duncan shakes his head to rid himself of all thoughts, focusing himself on the task at hand. His machine gun pointed forward, his eyes expertly scan the trees around them, looking for… looking for… looking for _what_, exactly? His _enemies_? Who were his enemies? The troops had been ordered to shoot the Nazis, the Japanese, the Italian. They were, after all, known as the Axis Powers, the bad-guys, the _enemies_. But Duncan didn't even know them. They were strangers, unknowns. How was he expected to kill them? Just because some big government guy said they were _bad_? That maybe their country's leaders had a wrong yet convincing way of doing things, so the confused people who followed them that only wanted help were automatically labeled _bad_?

He shakes his head once more. _Stop thinking_, he inwardly warns himself, _Because once you start, you realize how fucked up this war shit is. You realize how you don't know how you got where you are, you don't know where you're going, and you don't know what to do anymore. _His friend Thomas reaches out and brushes back a long veil of leafy green vines draped down from a thick tree branch. All twelve of the fellow troops in Duncan's infantry cautiously step into a clearing thick with weeds, trees, mud, and rocks. They all sweep their guns over the underbrush, waiting for anything to shoot. Anything. _Some_thing, so this painstaking nervousness can disappear and the horrible surprise can be over with already.

Suddenly, a crashed plane comes into view, smashed against a thick tree trunk and hissing a thick column of ashy-black smoke in the air. All of the soldiers in the US infantry peer forward, and they all take a collective breath as they see the American flag plastered on the cold gray metal. Travis, another of Duncan's close friends, steps up to the plane to check it out. Half of the infantry steps forward so Travis wouldn't be vulnerable to any surprise attacks, and the other half keeps their distance to watch their backs.

"Those German bastards shot another plane down." Travis takes a tentative step on a large boulder next to the plane and peeks in the shattered window at the tangled American body. "But this one looks like it's snarled up on something… Shit! We're dead!" Travis shouts, diving off the rock and onto the ground. Travis was covering his head while the plane immediately explodes in a blast of orange flames, and Duncan squints his eyes against the blast of heat.

The shouts of Germans float through the air all around the clearing, and Duncan's infantry backs into a nervous circle. Duncan puts his back to Thomas, and they turn in a slow circle, guns at the ready. Suddenly, Germans leap from trees and run out from the forest, shooting at the Americans. "Ambush!" one soldier alerts the others. The rapid sound of gunshots pierce the air, and flying shrapnel whizzes by at lightning speeds.

A German jumps from a high tree branch and lands steadily on his feet a few yards away from Duncan, whose thumb instinctively presses down hard on the machine gun's trigger. The machine gun kicks back repeatedly, like a metallic woodpecker hammering his shoulder, and his arms flex to keep the gun steady enough to aim. In less than a second or two, the German was lying dead on the ground, four scarlet bullet holes in his chest.

But Duncan didn't care. He was numb. Numb to the pain, the guilt, the fear. He's seen so much in the war… And this was nothing.

Duncan used to have to tell himself stories. He'd have to make up imaginary stories in his head. Every time he'd kill someone, he'd think, _Oh, that guy was a rapist. _Or a criminal, a druggie… _Any_thing to justify what he had just done. He would re-write the man's whole past in his mind, making the man sound like he would've been better off dead. Even though he had no idea… No idea whatsoever. He'd killed a man; one of the few dozens that Duncan had killed by now, two months or so into the war.

But now was different. He's figured out that it takes too much time to think. _So don't fucking think_. How much can happen in a second? Tons. Cities can get bombed, friends can be killed, tanks can destroy ten-story buildings… So don't think. Just do it.

_"To act is easy; to think is hard."_  
**- Goethe**

Over Duncan's shoulder, Thomas just shot down two Germans from tree stands in the leaves overhead. One of his fellow comrades tussles with a German, both of their guns accidentally tossed to the ground, before the German is finally stabbed in the neck with a pocket knife. He falls to the ground, groaning and bleeding to death. Despite the sounds of the soon-to-be-dead man's moans and the flickering of the orange flames as they slowly burned away the plane, the clearing was perfectly quiet.

"That was a quick ambush," one of Duncan's leaders, Captain Roebuck, comments. The infantry huddles into a group, assessing the damage. Two of their men lay dead, one of them face-down in a puddle of mud and the other one was lying over a clump of fern. The eight or so Germans that held the ambush also lay dead, lying in various unnatural positions on the ground. The rusty stench of blood was beginning to filter through the air. Travis was limping towards the group, and Duncan puts his arm around his pal.

Travis was more than just a friend. _Thomas_ was Duncan's best friend in this whole mess. But Travis… Travis was like Duncan's guardian angel, his savior. He was always watching out for Duncan, who was just a mere 16 years old. Duncan had lied about his age to get drafted, since he looked two years older than his actual age. When he told Travis this, it was almost like Travis' new mission to get the teen home safe and sound. Travis himself wasn't even that old; he was twenty-three years old with a pregnant girlfriend back home, but he still looked out for Duncan.

"We just need to get to Berlin," Captain Roebuck continues, "There we'll hopefully be able to take over Kirovsky Factory No. 501, which specializes in making weapons for the German, Japanese, and Italian army."

"Yes_sir_!" the infantry thunders, including Duncan. Nobody went against the captain's orders, or they were basically a traitor… even if they thought they were doing something good for their side, or that their idea was better than their leader's. Most often, if you went against orders, it hurt your side for the worse.

"Split into groups of three. We'll surround the factory from every angle, and more US infantrymen will meet us there for backup," Captain Roebuck drones on.

"Yes_sir_!"

Captain Roebuck goes on to list all of the groups, and Duncan ends up being paired with Travis and Thomas, obviously. Captain Roebuck tries to pair the men up with their friends; the people who they naturally "click" with, and could work better in teams with.

"We're heading three degrees to the north. Walk for ten minutes and Berlin should be there. If you don't wind up in Berlin… so God help you. Move out!" Captain Roebuck shouts. The men dive into the underbrush, boots stomping through the tall grasses as they dispersed.

Duncan hugged his gun to his chest, crashing through the droopy bushes and ducking under low tree branches. Travis was in front of him, and Thomas was behind him. He digs his big hand into the small pocket of his camouflaged army uniform and retrieves a dirt-encrusted compass that at one time used to be shiny bronze. He holds the compass flat on his palm, but the glass cover immediately fogs up in the extreme humidity of the wetland. He swipes his thumb over the glass, clearing it up. He squints at the shaky, red needle before it fogs over again.

"Goddamn humidity," Duncan murmurs.

"Spit on it," Thomas urges. Taking his advice, Duncan spits onto the glass cover and wipes his thumb over it. The streaks of his saliva keep the glass case clear just long enough to tell which direction they were traveling in. "A bit to the left," Thomas reads over his shoulder.

They stomp through the forest for about ten minutes, each of them counting to sixty multiple times in their head to keep track. Trees start to disappear, and the humidity drastically decreases. Roads start to appear, although they were hardly roads anymore. More like a crumbled mess of concrete rubble. But they followed it anyway. Whenever buildings started to appear, Travis announced, "Berlin. We made it."

Buildings started to rise up around them, and the three men were sure to stick to the alleys and side-roads. The blank windows seemed ominous and threatening, though nobody seemed to be watching them. The city seemed deserted, but it wasn't, because their mission was to invade a building that was obviously inhabited by the enemy. Black curtains were drawn over the windows to block the light so American bombers couldn't find the cities in the black of night. The bleak windows looked awkward and ungainly in the broad daylight. Or, what would have been daylight if not for the thick gray clouds that stretched across the expanse of the sky.

"Kristallnacht," Travis whispers as their heavy boots crunch over shards of broken glass lying in the street. Practically every other store had shattered windows and merchandise spilling out into the streets. Bright red swastikas, the Nazi symbol, were crudely painted on the wooden shop doors. The paint had dripped from the swastika in haggard lines that looked like dripping blood, like it had been painted in a frantic rush. "The night of broken glass."

"What's that?" asks Thomas in a whisper. Even though Duncan was two years younger than his friend, he seemed to know loads more than him. In fact, Duncan had much more common sense in general. He was raised rough, by an alcoholic father and a feeble mother with a drug addiction; Duncan was surprised they hadn't just dumped him for adoption, treating him the way they had. He knew how to fist-fight like a kickboxer, hand-roll a perfect cigarette, and how to give homemade tattoos all by the age of twelve. The only person in his life who really seemed to love him was his grandma, but he called her ma, since she was more of a mother to him than Emily, his actual mother. Too bad he only saw his ma about twice or three times a year.

"It's Anti-Semitism at it's finest," Duncan explains, "Anti-Semitism is hatred of the Jews, by the way. Nazi mobs basically planted coordinated attacks on Jewish homes and especially stores owned by Jews," Thomas explains, motioning towards the ransacked, abandoned shop windows. "It was mainly led by the SS and Hitler Youth, but many Germans just joined it. Judging on the massive amounts of debris and little outside activity, I'd have to say it happened just yesterday."

For once, Thomas was silent. They continue along the outskirts of town until they happen upon a large pile of burnt rubble. It spanned about the length of one of the apartment buildings around it, even though those buildings looked untouched. So it couldn't have possibly been a bombing of the city. _It was probably a Jewish building before it was burned down, _Duncan thinks_, A temple, maybe?_

A minute or so later, Travis stops ahead of Duncan. The three of them stop as Travis points out the sign that says "Kirovsky Factory No. 501" on the corner of the huge building across the street from them. Duncan crouches behind a trash can in an alley as Thomas and Travis hide in spots near him. As Duncan is loading bullets into his trusty Type 100 machine gun, he hears a voice. He looks up to see Thomas.

Travis holds up a finger, points it at himself, then points it at Duncan. He nods, knowing Travis was wanting to trade guns with him, and he lifts his gun. They both toss their guns across the alleyway to each other, the guns not with more than an inch between them when they're tossed past each other in midair. Duncan catches his gun with one hand and smirks.

"Duncan, I need you to climb up that fire escape to the top floor and snipe across the street into the Kirovsky Factory. You're the only one with the steady enough hands to do it," Travis orders. Duncan's smirk fades away. He was being given the job of a sniper.

Every night, he had been working on carving wooden skulls in his bunk, late at night, with his Swiss Army pocketknife. The other guys in his barrack seem to admire his carvings; so far, Duncan has made four skulls for some of the men in his infantry. But once everybody falls asleep, Duncan pulls out his prized skull. It had elaborate detail on every aspect of it: from the teeth in its jaw to the jaw line curving upwards to the smooth and empty eye-sockets. He wasn't giving that skull away.

Yes, it was true, he had very steady hands and fingers. It was a requirement, if one was to be a woodcarver. So one could say he was destined to be a sniper.

Duncan takes his Scoped Springfield M1-A rifle and slings the strap over his shoulder. He reaches up and pulls himself onto the fire escape, slowly climbing up the creaky steps. Every time he would pass a window, he'd hold his breath and wait anxiously for the curtain to snap aside and a Nazi to shoot him. But it never happened.

One flight of stairs below the top level, Duncan's breath caught in his throat as he noticed the curtains were gone on the windows. But then he saw the singed edges, and how they were burned half-off. He carefully steps forward and peers into the only dusty window that wasn't broken.

Dead bodies. Everywhere.

But nothing else, so Duncan keeps going. He had a job to do. At the very top of the stairs, he gently sets the sniper gun on the floor of the fire escape. His fingers grip the bottom of the shattered window and slowly slides it up, not daring to try to crawl through the broken window and most likely cut himself on the glass. When it makes a loud squeaking noise, he just slams it up quickly and grabs the gun. Pointing the gun ahead of him, he climbs into the room and scopes it out.

The room looked like an office, with a wooden desk, metal filing cabinet, and a large bookcase. Papers were littered over the floor, singed all around the corners, probably from lit Molotov cocktails. After checking in the closets and under all the furniture, he goes into the next room, his boots crunching over the glass that was just… everywhere. This was a kitchen, with a small ice box, metal sink, wood stove, and multiple wood cabinets. A soapy bin of wet clothes left in mid-wash was abandoned in a corner, and a wringer stood next to it. At the round kitchen table, a woman was slumped across the desk, dead. Her husband was collapsed on the floor, also dead. There was a shallow hole in the floor, with black smears around it and small holes punctured into the wallpaper. _Grenade_. Duncan steps towards her and peeks over the open newspaper on the table that she was laying over. The date was yesterday's date, November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht.

_A middle-aged couple must have lived here_, Duncan thinks. He steps into the next room in the small apartment, a bedroom. There was one wide cot, a wooden dresser, and a small desk. Duncan opens a door that was, strangely, closed and steps into what he had thought would've been a closet. But instead, it was another bedroom. _The husband and wife slept in different beds? Different bedrooms, too?_

He walks around the room. There was a cot, much smaller than the one in the previous bedroom. There was also a dresser, a desk, and a mirror smeared with ash nailed to the wall. A fringed rug covered the dusty wooden floor, and glass was sprayed everywhere. A brick was amid the glass shards, probably thrown through the window by the Nazis. Duncan kneels in front of the window and props the nose of the gun on the windowsill. The black curtain around the shattered window was halfway burned off. He inserts a few cartridges of bullets into the gun, and peers into the scope, looking into the windows of the Kirovsky Factory across the street. With the scope, he could see the silhouettes of Germans across the street in between the crosshairs. Duncan hears something sliding across the wood floor, a sound like glass scraping across hardwood. He turns his gaze away from the scope, away from the windows across the street, and he slowly turns around to face the empty room.

Duncan had a feeling he wasn't alone.


	2. Hello

**Courtney POV**

Courtney was in her room, laying in her small white cot with the freshly-washed covers pulled up over her shoulders. It was late at night, but she couldn't sleep. The black blinds of her window were pulled tight, so no light would leak out and give away where Berlin was to the enemy: the Americans, the Russians, and the English. The worst part was, she wasn't even allowed to light a candle to see to be able to do her homework. She would just have to do her homework right as the sun was up in the morning to get a head start.

A creaking sound came from the kitchen; the sound of her mother twisting the handle on the wooden wringer to dry their clothes. A tiny candle was flickering, and the light spilled underneath Courtney's door. People were allowed to keep lights on, as long as the black curtains were thick enough to keep the lights out. Her parents forbid her to light a candle, because if anybody were to get in trouble for keeping the lights on, her parents wanted it to be them and not her.

Eventually, the candle is blown out and the acrid scent of smoke fills the air. The springs of her parents' cot squeak as they settle into it for the night. Soon after that, Courtney falls into a fitful sleep. She awakens nearly three times throughout the night. Nightmares have been coming to her every night. The dreams are often about the war, or concentration camps, or the like. She knew it was only a matter of time… But when?

Courtney wakes up to the sound of smashing glass. She jolts awake, sitting in her bed, drenched in a cold sweat. _My dreams are becoming more and more realistic with each passing night_, she thinks dreadfully. Courtney tosses her covers to the side and stumbles in a sleepy stupor into her parents' empty bedroom. She had slept in… again. The nightmares make her extremely tired, and she sleeps later than she actually means to. _Guess the homework will have to wait until study hall_.

The sound of smashing glass is closer. Much closer. As in, right downstairs a few floors. Courtney freezes in her tracks, terrified, pausing to listen to what was going on. Another smash of glass. Screaming. An explosion. Then an ear-shattering sound of cracking wood jolts her out of her temporary paralysis. She sprints into the kitchen, hands frantically grasping the doorframe.

"What's going on?" Courtney shrieks. Her parents were clinging to each other, peeking outside of the black curtain that covered their windows at the scenario playing out on the street below. It was 9:43a.m. on the clock above their heads. "I said, _what's_ going _on_?"

Her mother turns and says tersely, "Courtney. Back to your room. Now. Stay there until I say it's safe to come out."

"But what about you?" Courtney replies weakly, shrinking back into her parent's bedroom. Suddenly, the window in front of her parents shatters, spraying them with glass. Courtney and her mother scream, and her father shouts out something unintelligible over the noise. Then, something that Courtney has only seen in her dreams flies through the window and bounces onto the kitchen floor.

A grenade.

Her father, frantic terror in his eyes, dives on top of it. "Daddy!" Courtney screams at the top of her lungs. His body jolts with the muffled explosion, then his body is still. Tears were flowing down her face. Courtney's mother reaches traumatically over the kitchen table, sobbing and yelling her father's name. The rapid fire of a machine gun shoots through the window, penetrating her mother's body, who slumps over the kitchen table. "Mother!"

_"During war, the laws are silent."_  
**- Quintus Tullius Cicero**

Her mother weakly lifts her head, steadily bleeding to death right on their table, her blood soaking into the open newspaper laying on the table. "Go to your room," her mom says weakly in a tone no more than a whisper. How Courtney was able to hear her mother's command over the commotion from the streets, she didn't know. But once her mother's head flops limply onto the table, Courtney sprints back to her room.

She slams the heavy wooden door shut and presses her back to it. Her sobbing sends wave after wave of pounding headache to her head, and her knees begin to wobble. Courtney slides her back down the door until she was in a sitting position.

She didn't know how long she cried. All she knew was that with every minute that passed, her pounding headache only grew worse. Eventually, her crying subsided as she ran out of tears. Courtney was still absolutely heartbroken, and she felt as if she could cry forever… but the tears just wouldn't come and her migraine probably couldn't take much more crying.

She crawls across the room onto the thin, hand-woven rug her mother had made her for her eighth birthday. It was actually supposed to be a blanket, but it was so thick that it smothered her in her sleep; thus, earning its place on the floor as a rug. There was no strength left to climb into her bed, so she just curls up into a quaking ball on the floor. Her eyes flutter closed, and she clenches her jaw to try to lessen the pain of her headache. After a few minutes of laying there and listening to the explosions from the street, her headache is almost completely gone.

Unexpectedly, something crashes through her window, spraying her body with glass. Her eyes fly open, which was a mistake. Her room was full of thick smoke that burned her eyes. Something in her apartment building was on fire, possibly the rooms below her, and the smoke was just floating up. Courtney squeezes her eyes shut and rubs the heels of her hands on her eyes. No matter how hard she pressed her eyeballs back into her eye sockets, the stinging wouldn't go away. Irritated tears stream down her cheeks until the burning disappears.

Courtney flattens herself to the floor and peeks her eyes open. There was a foot of air near the ground that was clear as day, but an ominous cloud of smoke hovered above her. She glances upwards to her window, which was shattered and had glinting shards of glass edging all around the window frame, looking like jagged shark teeth. Behind her, a rust-colored brick lay amid shards of glass on the floor.

A cream-colored note was folded in half and tied to the brick with twine. Courtney spins her body around, still flattened to the floor, and gently unties the twine. She unfolds the note and reads, _Schmutzigen Juden. _Her throat constricts with fresh tears. The note translated to 'filthy Jew.'

Suddenly, another explosion of shattering glass resounded from behind her. Courtney's body stung with burns from something that had flown through the window and exploded on the floor. She muffles a scream as she quickly sits up, eyes stinging in the smoke, and brushes the burning embers off her legs and arms in a frenzy. She looks around and sees half of her room in flames. The curtains, her bed, the rug.

Courtney stands up and dashes to the window. She grabs fistfuls of the black curtains and whaps them in the air until the smoldering goes out. Then she collapses on the ground and runs her hands back and forth over her rug, smothering the burning embers that were glowing a bright orange color. The embers on her bed seared holes through her white sheets until Courtney put them out with the glass of water on her bedside table.

As she stood up, taking a deep breath of smoky air, her head swarmed with fuzzy spots. Courtney sat down on the ground and put her head between her knees until the lightheadedness disappeared. When she looked up again, there was a glass bottle cracked in half on the floor. She leaned over, picked up both halves, and tried to piece them together to read the label. It was an old glass soda bottle, but the brand name had been scratched out and a new name had been written over it: Molotov. As in, Molotov cocktail. _Clever_, Courtney thinks dryly.

She sniffs the inside of the bottle, and immediately wrinkled her nose. It smelled like burnt gasoline, which was not a good smell at all. A scorched wick was curled up at the bottom of the bottle. As Courtney laid the cracked Molotov back on the ground, she rested her forehead against her mattress. How did her life become so… terrible? Just a year ago, Hitler hadn't even been in power. Just a few weeks ago, her normal German friends had still talked to her. And just yesterday, her parents had been alive. _Where did things go wrong? How could people be so… cruel?_

Courtney was suddenly overwhelmed with an extreme urge to go to sleep. She looked at her bed, which had ash and dust all over the once-clean sheets. She takes her pillow, rips off the filthy pillowcase, and crawls under the bed where there was less rubble. Glass shards slice a few cuts into her legs, but other than that, she was hardly hurt from the whole ordeal.

The second she laid her head on the pillow, she fell asleep and the first nightmare began. It started out at the public school she went to. Courtney was sitting at her desk at the front of the room, and the teacher was talking about chemical equations. A big Periodic Table of Elements was drawn on the chalkboard. Suddenly, the classroom door slams open and three Nazis walk in. One of them raises a gun to Courtney and pulls the trigger.

There's a bright white flash and another nightmare begins. There are so many ongoing nightmares that she can hardly keep track, much less remember, all of them. Every now and then, she'll wake up in a cold sweat still underneath her bed. And she's still alive, which seems like a miracle due to the previous events of her life. But then after she acknowledges she's still alive, she'll fall asleep again and a new nightmare will begin.

The last nightmare she could remember is of her in the middle of the street in front of her house. The looming Kirovsky Factory is to her left, and her apartment building is to the right. In front of her is the empty cobblestone road she lives on. It's deathly silent, and soon the sound of sirens come from the distance. The bomb sirens, signaling an attack from the Americans. Or, for that matter, the Russians or the English. Courtney tries to run for shelter in her apartment, but her feet are rooted to the street. She can't move. Five huge airplanes loom overhead, and the bottoms of the airplanes open up. A dark shape drops from the cavity of the planes, and begins falling to the ground as if it was in slow-motion. Courtney opens her mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. She squeezes her eyes shut and she feels the tremors and rumbles of bombs exploding around her.

Courtney wakes up to feel the tremors. Her heart begins beating quickly, but she soon realizes the tremors were hardly loud enough to be from bombs. Instead, the vibrations in the ground were slow and repetitive, like footsteps. She raises her head off the pillow to listen. Yes, they were most definitely footsteps. And they were in her parents' bedroom.

_What day is it?, _the random thought enters her head. There was barely any noise from outside, so it very much might have been the next day… But she had no way to check the time from under her bed. There was a little pain in her stomach too, so it must have been a while since she's eaten.

Eventually, her bedroom door opens with a creak and two gray boots appear in the doorway. Courtney curls into a fearful ball, shrinking against the wall underneath her bed. The boots pause, as if they knew she was there. A fearful thought strikes her: _Was the mysterious person a Nazi? _Terror seizes her heart and her heart begins beating at the most rapid pace it probably ever has before. She didn't want to go to a concentration camp! She clutched her chest, silently begging herself to calm down. _Could he hear my heartbeat?_, she thinks, even though it was an absurd thought and she knew it.

The gray boots slowly creep along her floor, crunching glass shards under his weight. The person kneels on its knees by her window, and Courtney hears the metallic click of bullets being loaded into a gun. She gulps, but slowly inches toward the edge of the bed. _Who is it?_ From what she could see, the person has green camouflaged pants smeared with dirt and dust. Closer… closer… _Yes_.

There was a colorful red, white, and blue American flag on the person's camouflaged shoulder. Courtney slides a bit farther from her hideout under the bed and peeks her head out into the open. She sees an army-green helmet over thick black hair. The man's face was leaning over the gun, peering into a scope into the Kirovsky Factory across the street. He had a sharp jaw line, and light stubble shadowing his cheeks. Courtney shifts her body to start crawling back to her pillow that was pressed against the wall under her bed, but glass gets caught in her nightgown and causes a loud scraping sound against the wood floor. She hears the man turn around, and she freezes where she is.

"Hello? Who's there?" he calls. His voice sounded hard and callous. Courtney bit her lip. She knew a little bit of English, but hardly any. But should she speak out? The man might kill her, thinking she was a Nazi instead of a Jew.

Suddenly, the man reaches under the bed and his hand grazes her shoulder. Courtney flinches and backs up all the way to the wall. She grabs her pillow and holds it in front of her chest like a shield. The man sets his gun on the ground, and it just so happened to point right at her face. Then he kneels on the ground, and his face peeks under her bed. When his ice-blue eyes make contact with her wide eyes, she bursts into tears. Not knowing what to say to make him spare her life, she squeaks, "Hello."


	3. Enemy Sniper

**Duncan POV**

Duncan reaches under the bed, thinking a cat or puppy or something had been frightened under the bed. But then his hand connects with fabric, like clothing, and he could swear he felt hair brush against his skin. But whatever he had felt quickly moves away from his touch. Duncan puts his gun on the ground in front of the bed, where the noise had come from. He gets down on his hands and knees and peers under the bed. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he sees a dark figure pressed against the wall, as far as possible from him.

It was a girl. A teenage girl, about his age. Under the bed. How had he not seen that when he first came into the room? What if she had been an armed Nazi instead? _I just have to be more careful_, Duncan warns himself. The girl bursts into tears and Duncan grits his teeth. He hated to see girls cry, even girls he barely knew. But she was probably scared half to death.

"Hello," the girl says in a shaky voice, thick with a German accent. But judging by her dark brown shoulder-length hair, wide onyx eyes, and creamy caramel-colored skin, she was definitely _not_ a German. Well, she was obliviously a German, just not a "perfect" German, according to Hitler. The regulation Germans that Hitler had said would build the "perfect society" had bright blonde hair, sky-blue eyes, and pale white skin.

Duncan reaches out one hand, causing the girl to flinch, and he picks up a piece of paper on the ground that had been folded in half. He stands up, out of view from the window, gun in one hand and the paper in the other. His thumb flips the paper over and he reads the words, _Schmutzigen Juden. _Duncan knew a little German from the soldiers in his infantry who thought it would be a good idea to learn the language of the enemy, and he knew that 'Juden' meant 'Jew.' As for the word 'schmutzigen,' Duncan could only imagine what kind of insult that could be. He flicks the paper on top of the bed and looks at the shadow on the floor the bed was casting.

"Come out," Duncan tells the girl. He knew she could hear him, he just hoped she could understand him. A minute passed, and Duncan was getting wary. He was supposed to be killing off Nazis in the Kirovsky Factory across the street. How were his infantrymen doing without his help?

"Pardon?" he hears a tentative voice ask from under the bed. _Good, _Duncan thinks_, At least she knows a few simple English words._ He crouches on the floor and looks at her. He curls and uncurls his pointer finger towards him, motioning for her to crawl out. Duncan stands up and waits.

There were a few rustling sounds from under the bed before he sees her brunette head stick out and her body roll across the floor. She slowly stands up, and she looks at Duncan as if for further instruction.

Her white cotton nightgown was hardly white anymore; it was smeared with dust, blood, and charcoal ash. A yellow Star of David was sewn onto the breast of her nightgown. The freckles on her otherwise blemish-free face were partially hidden under layers of dust from being under her bed. There were a few burn marks on her hands, and there was dirt underneath her clipped fingernails. On her elbows and knees, there were scratches with a little bit of dried blood around them. Her eyes were red and irritated, and were frozen in a state of shock, fear, and sadness.

But despite all this, Duncan could see that she actually looked pretty underneath all the filth. Her eyes were huge, and if they weren't so red-rimmed, they'd probably be a dazzling deep brown. Her hair was a bit tangled, but it was shiny and chocolatey-brown. And even though she wore a conservative nightgown down to her mid-thighs, the fabric clung to her skin in a few places because of sweat, and he could tell she had a great figure.

He points at her bed and tells her, "Sit." She tentatively sits on the edge of her mattress, looking at Duncan for affirmation that she translated his command correctly. He nods at her and adds, "Wait." He bit his tongue, silently kicking himself for talking to her like a dog.

Duncan crouches in front of the open window again and props the gun up on the windowsill. He looks over his shoulder and nods at Courtney once more, who was now curled up in a ball in the corner of the mattress farthest as possible from him. He shrugged to himself and peered into the scope. _Time to get back to business_.

Below, he could see Thomas and Travis in the alley still hiding behind the trash bins. Across the street, in the alleys on both sides of the Kirovsky Factory, were two large groups of soldiers. Duncan peered through the scope at the front door, where they would begin their attack. There were two guards at the door, casually talking and smoking cigarettes. Duncan forces his mind to clear of all thoughts, and he relaxes all of his muscles except for his arms, which were steadying the gun on the windowsill. He closes one eye and focuses the other one in the scope, aligning one guard's head right in between the crosshairs. Finally, when his body became as still and steady as it possibly could, Duncan pulled the trigger.

The bullet sliced through the air, drilling right into the guard's skull. The guard limply fell to the ground, his gun clattering down the front steps. The cigarette in his partner's lips fell to the ground in shock, and the second guard frantically lifts his gun to the sky, searching for the sniper before he got him next. But Duncan was too quick. He swiveled the gun, quickly aligned the crosshairs on the next guard's chest, and pulled the trigger. The second guard fell in a lump on top of the first guard, and all was silent. Silent, but frantic. In the windows of the Kirovsky building, Nazis were going crazy. They had heard the gunshots.

In the corner of his eye, Duncan sees the girl trembling so hard she looks like she's vibrating. He ignores her and opens both eyes, watching at the two teams from either side of the warehouse sneak out of the alley and up to the front door. A handful of soldiers shove themselves at the now-locked door, and it snaps open with such a loud crack that Duncan could hear it from his hiding spot. There were five or so Nazis waiting behind the door, but they were quickly mowed down by rapid machinegun fire from the Allies, who advanced further into the building.

Duncan raised his gaze through the scope to the higher floors of the Kirovsky Factory, which would have the greatest advantage of having more time to prepare for attack as the Allies invaded the factory, since they were furthest from the front door. Duncan twisted the scope, zooming in even more. He could see every detail of a warehouse room through one window. There were water stains on the ceiling, rusty nails laying on wooden tables, and sawdust scattered across the floor. It fascinated him. But it was hard to focus on one of the many Nazis running back and forth across the window.

At long last, a Nazi screeched to a halt next to a dark-green telephone on the wall. He wore a red swastika on his shoulder and had a black cap on his head. From the many pins and patches on his chest, Duncan guessed he was a general. Duncan lined up the crosshairs on the general's chest, and shot him right as he was dialing a number into the spin dial. The general collapsed on the ground and lay still. Almost immediately after Duncan fired the shot, a bullet chipped off the brick on the outside of the apartment building, narrowly missing the window Duncan was hiding in. He swore silently and moved to the side of the window. He clicked a few more bullet cartridges in the gun for further use. Duncan lowered to a crouch and peered over the windowsill. He hadn't even aimed his gun before a flash signaled from above and a bullet whizzed over his head.

Duncan immediately dropped to the ground, breathing heavily from the close encounter. He peers at the girl still sitting on the bed, whose eyes seemed twice as wide as they were before. She was staring at the bullet which had lodged into the heavy wooden dresser. Duncan turned back to his gun, not having to worry about her because she was safely out of the way of the window. He raises his eyes to the window above him. He had seen the flash of the gun from the enemy sniper. It came from high on the opposite side of the street, most likely the roof of the Kirovsky Factory.

Duncan stands up and flattens himself against the wall next to the window. He peers out between the half-destroyed curtain and the edge of the window. He grips his gun in his clammy hands and prepares to jump out to shoot the sniper. But before he gets the chance, there's another flash, and a lightning bolt of pain shoots through Duncan's shoulder.

The girl lets out a strangled scream as she clamps a hand over her mouth. Duncan kneels on the ground, gritting his teeth and holding his hand to his left shoulder. His hand feels the warm blood seeping through his uniform, and he checks the back of his shoulder. There was an exit wound there, where the bullet had completely shot through his body. That would be easier to repair, since they didn't have to remove the bullet, but a wave of lightheadedness hit him, but he struggled to keep his eyes open. Nazis would _not_ find him wounded in a Jew's apartment.

Duncan had an overwhelming urge to run and leave the apartment, back to his infantry. He had to escape. But the only way out of the room was back through the door, which was in view of the sniper. The only way out of there was to kill the enemy sniper. Then he thought of a plan.

Duncan removed his helmet and balanced it on the edge of his gun. He put it under the window and held it up so it was in view. Barely a second passed until the helmet was struck by another bullet. He tilted the nozzle of the gun so that the helmet fell through the window and clattered to the street below, feigning his death. He quickly crawled to his feet and peered up at the roof of the Kirovsky Factory.

His ruse had succeeded. The enemy sniper, seeing the helmet fall, thought he had killed his sniper. But that was not the case. The sniper was now standing tall, his head clearly silhouetted against the gray sky. Duncan smirked and lifted his gun to his enemy sniper. His hand trembled in eagerness, and he pressed his lips together. Duncan took a deep breath through his nose and fired.

_"Never do an enemy a small injury."_  
**- Niccoló Machiavelli**

His enemy was hit. The sniper stumbled a few steps in the dance of death, dropping his gun in the process. He slowly fell forward as if in slow-motion, and the enemy sniper tripped on the short wall surrounding the roof of the warehouse. The dying man crumpled up and fell forward. Falling through the air, he completed a full somersault before striking the ground face-down with a dull thud. A small pool of blood began to trickle around him.

"Get up," Duncan tells the girl on the bed, motioning for her to stand. She does, so Duncan continues, "Collect anything you want to bring with. I can take you back to our camp and then we'll figure out what to do with you then." He knew that if the girl was left behind in her apartment, Nazis would definitely come and kill her. Either that, or she'd be shipped off to a concentration camp. And Duncan just wouldn't be able to live with himself if he knew this innocent girl his age died because he didn't do anything to help.

But she just stared at him blankly. Duncan knew he hadn't talked simply enough for her to understand, but his patience was wearing thin. His shoulder hurt like a bitch, and the scent of his own blood seeping through his uniform was making him uncomfortable. "Get your clothes. Your… diary. Valuables. Anything you want to take with you," Duncan explains, waving a hand in the air.

The girl blinks at him and turns to her dresser. She quickly takes out a bag about the size of a pillowcase and begins stuffing clothes into it. Then she slings the strap of her bag over her shoulder and slips some brown leather shoes onto her feet. She hurries over to her desk and picks up three small books, one with an American flag on it, one with a silver spiral edge, and the other with gold script on the cover.

"What's that?" Duncan asks, plucking the book with the American flag on it out of her hand. She doesn't protest. He turns it over in his hands, looking at the worn black cover. He flips it open, scanning a few pages. "Is this a German-to-English dictionary?" The girl nods and Duncan hands the book back to her. She takes it and holds it against her chest with the other book. "And what's the other books?"

The girls holds out the book with the gold script, showing him the cover before cradling the book once again. She hid the third book behind the other two. "Torah," she answers. Duncan catches a glimpse of the Star of David on the spine of the book.

"Oh. Is that the Jewish Bible? Like, the Old Testament?"

"The Torah."

"Uh… sure," Duncan replies, rolling his eyes. He had no idea how frustrating it could be to try to communicate with somebody who had little to no idea what you were saying. "Follow me." He motions with his hand for the girl to follow.

He leads the way through her parent's bedroom and into the kitchen. Right when they step into the kitchen, though, the girl starts crying again. Her parents' bodies lay where they were when Duncan first got here. He waited while she went first to her father's body and kissed her father's cheek, even though the bodies had already begun to smell. She takes a gold watch from her father's wrist and puts it on her own, though the watch was so big it almost slipped off. Then she goes to her mother's body and kisses her cheek, too. The girl slides a gold wedding ring off the woman's ring finger and puts it on her pointer finger, which was the only finger where it would fit and not fall off. Finally, the girl nodded at Duncan to continue.

He gulped down the tightness that had formed in his throat and walked into the office. He crosses the strap of his gun across his torso and crawls through the window, careful of his injured shoulder. Then, once he was on the fire escape, Duncan offers his good hand to the girl. She takes it and climbs through the window. The wind from outside ruffles her nightgown, and she blushes.

They walk down the fire escape, Duncan still looking out for any Nazis that may be hiding in the shadows. At the bottom of the fire escape, he climbed down the ladder one-handed so he wouldn't strain his injured arm. His vision was getting fuzzy, probably from all the blood loss. But once he got to his fellow soldiers, he'd be fine. Duncan waited as the girl climbed down the fire escape ladder. She held the edges of her nightgown so it wouldn't blow up with the wind as she leaped onto the concrete next to Duncan.

He sneaks along the alley and lets out a sigh of relief as he sees Travis and Thomas still ducking behind their separate dumpsters-slash-hiding places. Duncan puts his hand on Thomas' shoulder and blurts, "Man, have I never been so glad to see you."

Thomas turns around and replies, "Duncan! What took you so- Oh, God, dude." His eyes lock onto his friend's shoulder, the blood seeping through his uniform so heavy that it was dripping onto the ground. Duncan's feet suddenly shifted beneath him and he had to put his hand against the brick wall of the alley to keep his balance.

"What?" Duncan asked. His vision got so blurred that he could hardly tell Thomas was still standing in front of him. Then his vision shifted to where it was so sharp that he could see every single detail of his friend's face. The light freckle on his neck, the gold specks in his dark brown eyes, and even the few hairs he had missed under his jaw while shaving this morning.

Thomas' mouth moved, but Duncan couldn't hear him. "What?" Duncan repeated, his vision turning blurry once more. His head got so heavy that he could hardly keep his knees straight. He felt like he was falling to the right, so Duncan leaned a bit to the left in order to try to balance it out. But it turns out that he leaned in the wrong direction, his senses out-of-whack, and so he stumbles to the ground.

Finally Duncan's hearing came back to him, and he heard his friends shouting his name. The Jewish girl gasped and covered her mouth with her hand that wasn't holding her books to her stomach. His shoulder wound had finally gone numb, and it wasn't stinging anymore. But he _did _feel a steady throbbing that matched the beat of his heart, as his veins pumped drop after drop of valuable blood out of his body. Duncan stared unblinkingly up at the ash-gray sky until blackness took him under.


	4. Army Camp

**Courtney POV**

Courtney gasped and covered her mouth as the American soldier collapsed on the ground of the alley they were now standing in. She hugged her German-to-English Dictionary, her father's doctoring notes, and Torah to her stomach so hard that she could feel her heartbeat through her bellybutton. Two other soldiers, also American, by the looks of the US flags on their shoulders, hovered over the fallen soldier doing all they could to keep him awake. They kept shouting, "Duncan! Duncan!" over and over.

Courtney opened her German-to-English Dictionary and tried to look up the word 'Duncan.' Maybe it was the soldier's name, or an English word that meant 'help.' She flipped to the Du- section of her dictionary, but nothing was there. She looks up at the other soldiers and repeats what they were saying. "Duncan?" she asks, "Duncan?"

The two soldiers look up at her, shocked into silence. It was as if they hadn't noticed her presence until now. "Who are you?" one of them asks. He looked like the youngest and more obnoxious of the two. He's lucky that what he said was one of the English phrases she had already learned in school.

"Courtney Ramsden," she answers. The two soldiers look at each other, then back at her. The older soldier, who seemed to be in his lower twenties, stepped forward and began speaking German. She couldn't help it; Courtney smiled from the relief of having somebody speak the same language as her.

"Hallo, Frau Ramsden. Wie sie wissen Herr Mason?" the soldier asks. _Hello, Miss Ramsden. How do you know Mr. Mason?_ The younger soldier looks up at his partner in bewilderment, while trying to pry off the unconscious soldier's uniform to analyze his wound.

"Herr Mason? Ist er?" Courtney replies, glancing at the sniper soldier on the ground. _Mr. Mason? Is that him? _

"Ja. Aber er geht durch Duncan," the soldier confirms. _Yes. But he goes by Duncan. _Courtney nods and she looks at Duncan's bare chest, since the soldier had succeeded in taking off his shirt. His scarlet bullet wound was near a prominent shoulder muscle just above his collarbone. Dried blood was splattered against one pectoral muscle, and a small trickle of fresh blood ran out of the bullet wound. "Sind sie ein Jude?" _Are you a Jew?_

Courtney nodded her head profusely and even held out her Torah as proof. "Wird er gesunden?" she asks, biting her lip. _Will he be okay? _Truthfully, she was worried about him. Even though she and Duncan had hardly talked, let alone even had a complete conversation, he had found her in her room. He took her to the Americans, who would save her from the Nazis who were planning on killing her or making her suffer in a concentration camp. And for that, she was grateful.

"Die kugel komplett schuss durch seine schulter wir werden also keine sorgen uber chirurgie zum entfernen der bullet," the soldier explains. _The bullet completely shot through his shoulder, so we won't have to worry about surgery to remove the bullet. _

"Das ist gut," Courtney replies. _That's good. _"Durch die art und weise was ist ihre namens?" she asks. _By the way, what's your name?_

"Thomas Gottfreid," the soldier answers. "Nun, bitte folgen Sie uns. Wir müssen uns Duncan zu unserem Lager, so erhalten wir können ihm helfen." _Now, please follow us. We have to get Duncan to our camp, so we can get him help._

Courtney nods, and moves out of the way as the two Americans pick Duncan up. One of them held him by his arms, and the other held his feet. Together, they managed to lift him and carry him away from the Kirovsky Factory No. 501 across the street, out of sight from the Nazis. "Mein Vater war Arzt, und er lehrte mich ein wenig über Schussverletzungen. Ich erinnere mich nur ein bisschen, aber vielleicht kann ich helfen…?" Courtney asks. _My father was a doctor, and he taught me a bit about bullet wounds. I only remember a little, but perhaps I could help…?_

Travis nods quickly. "Bitte," he begs, "Mein Freund braucht alle Hilfe die er bekommen kann." _Please. My friend needs all the help he can get._

Courtney follows them to a large green truck that probably transported Americans into Berlin for the attack. Travis and the other American load Duncan onto the back platform, then Travis says something to the other American to get him into the driver's seat and start the truck. "Zuerst müssen wir den Bereich um die Wunde zu reinigen. Haben Sie Wasser? Und einige Tuch?" Courtney asks, removing the rest of Duncan's shirt to get it out of the way. _First we have to clean the area around the wound. Do you have any water? And some cloth?_

Travis hands Courtney his half-full canteen and scrambles around to look for cloth. "Wir haben kein Tuch," he finally reports. _We have no cloth._

"Es ist in Ordnung, kann ich nur Wasser verwenden," Courtney replies, unscrewing the cap on Travis' canteen. _It's fine, I can just use water. _She pours the water across Duncan's torso, over the areas where blood has dried onto him. Her hands glide over his bare skin, rubbing away the dried blood, until the only blood remaining is slowly trickling from his shoulder wound. "Kann ich deine Socken?" Courtney asks, looking at Travis' boot. _Can I have your sock?_

Travis nods and quickly unlaces one boot. He peels off his sock and hands it over. Courtney balls up his sock and presses it to the wound to try to stop the bleeding. Duncan begins to stir as he starts to regain consciousness. His shoulder muscle flinches, and Courtney holds down one of his arms to try to keep him still.

_"There is no glory in battle _  
_worth the blood it costs."_  
**- Dwight D. Eisenhower**

Soon, though, Duncan let out a long, low moan. Then his eyes fly open and he groans, "Shit." His eyes land on Travis, then his position in the truck, and finally Courtney's hand pressing Travis' sock to his shoulder. The white sock was now stained completely red. "You a doctor or something?"

Courtney shrugs and lets Travis explain how her father was a doctor and how she knows a little, since Duncan clearly didn't recognize her from her apartment. Duncan's body begins quivering in pain, though, and Courtney turns to Travis. He clenches his teeth together, his hands ball into tight fists, and he squeezes his eyes shut. "Haben Sie Morphin?" Courtney asks. _Do you have morphine? _

Travis reaches under the seats to grab a first aid case that was all but empty. He rustles through the empty wrappers and withdraws one morphine shot, which he hands to Courtney. "Das ist alle," he says remorsely. _This is all._

Courtney nods and takes Travis' hand, placing it over the sock to hold it as she administers the morphine. "Das muss jetzt zu tun. Wir können mehr, wenn wir zu Ihrem Lager zu erhalten," she says. _That will have to do for now. We can get more once we get to your camp._ Courtney untucks one of Duncan's pant legs from his boot and rolls it up to reveal his calf. She bites off the protective covering on the tip of the needle and sticks it into a vein. After the morphine has drained into his system, Courtney removes the empty cartridge and rolls down his pants leg.

The truck screeches to a halt, and Courtney grabs on to the seat to avoid flying out of the truck. She also has a hand on Duncan's chest, though, to keep him from moving much too. He looks up at her, and recognition floods his face; now he remembered her. The other American climbs out from the driver's seat to help Travis carry Duncan off the bed of the truck. "Medic!" Travis yells towards the green medical tent, which had a bright red hospital cross hanging over the tent flap.

Courtney climbed out of the truck after them and looked around to examine her surroundings. The camp was made up of big green tents, and a few crudely made shacks. She guessed one of the larger shacks was the mess hall, since it had a few picnic tables sitting outside. The smaller shack next to it was probably the bathrooms, and the other tents were most likely the sleeping quarters, hospital, etc. She quickly follows them into the hospital tent so she wouldn't be separated from the only people she knew.

Inside, there were dozens of crippled young men with varying levels of injuries. Some have broken legs or arms, or even amputated limbs, while others are apparently there for burns or bullet wounds. Duncan was laying on a white cot with two nurses surveying his wounds. Travis and Thomas were standing by nervously, speaking softly to each other.

Courtney walks up to Travis and asks, "What do I do?" She figured it would be best to speak as much English as possible in the camp. Not that she would fool anybody, since she still had a German accent, but still.

"Oh," Travis blinks at her, as if just remembering she was there. "Follow me. Ich werde Sie auf die allgemeine Diskussion zu sehen, was sollten wir mit dir zu tun." _I'll have you talk to the general to see what we should do with you._

Courtney bites her lip and follows Travis out of the hospital tent, leaving Duncan with the two nurses and his other American friend. "Who is the American?" Courtney asks.

"We're all Americans. But I'm guessing you mean Thomas," Travis explains, leading them across the courtyard.

"Sure."

Travis laughs and pulls back the tent flap. Courtney walks in, and Travis follows her. Inside, the tent was split into three rooms. The first room was more of a lobby, with several chairs and even a secretary sitting at a desk. The other two rooms were probably the general's office and his bedroom. "We'd like to talk to General Smith?" Travis asks the secretary.

"He's a bit busy," the secretary excuses, after checking through a thick manila folder on her desk.

"You don't understand. This is urgent. We found a German girl in her apartment building when we thought the place was clear. She practically saved Private Duncan's life after he got shot by a sniper," Travis elaborates.

The secretary presses her lips together and stares at Courtney. "Is that her?" she asks Travis, and he nods. She lets out a sigh and says, "Fine. Go ahead in."

Travis leads through the tent partition on the right, into a larger room. This room seemed more like an office. There was a desk, where the young general was sitting. Behind the general was a large map of northern Germany with a bunch of push-pins in the map. "General Smith," Travis announces, saluting his commander.

"Ah, Private Travis," the general replies, standing up and saluting. General Smith's gaze turns to Courtney, and his eyes turn wary. "Who is this?"

"Our troop was invading the Kirovsky Factory No. 501 when Duncan got shot by a sniper. He had also found this German girl still in her apartment, even after all other Jews on the block had either been killed or sent to concentration camps. So he took her to us and she ended up nearly saving his life before he bled to death," Travis explains once again.

From then on, Courtney couldn't understand what was being said. Her gaze just went back and forth between Travis and the general. But from the looks of things, the general wasn't being convinced. Courtney, who still had her three books and bag with her, held out her father's doctoring notes. "My father was a doctor!" she interrupts.

Travis and General Smith look at her with bewildered expressions. The general slowly takes the journal from Courtney's outstretched hand and flips through it. All of the notes were in German, but there were a few sketches of the body she hoped he would find impressive. General Smith hands it back and raises an eyebrow for her to continue, to give reasons why he should even think about keeping her.

"I know a bit. I can help," Courtney fumbles to explain.

General Smith purses his lips in internal debate, just like his secretary had. He looks at Travis, who nods in support. Finally, the general looks at Courtney, still in her nightgown. "Let's go talk to Private Duncan," he suggests, "But first, you should change into real clothes."


	5. The General

**Duncan POV**

Duncan was sitting in the hospital cot with no shirt on, just white cotton bandages wrapping around the upper-right half of his torso, covering his wounded shoulder. He replays the scene in the Jewish apartment building for the dozenth time in his head. Duncan kept cursing himself at how he hadn't seen that bullet coming, and how he hadn't hid himself properly. If he hadn't been shot, he wouldn't even be in this mess in the first place. In fact, he'd probably be invading the Kirovsky Factory No. 501 right now with Thomas, who had gone to return the truck and continue the attack. Then afterwards, he and his troop buddies would be playing poker, gambling for cigarettes.

To Duncan's surprise, General Smith and Travis entered the hospital tent. That German Jew was with them too, walking in shyly behind them with her dictionary and some kind of journal. Duncan had to salute the general with his left hand, since his right shoulder was the fucked-up one. And that reminded him… He wouldn't be doing much with his now-crippled dominant arm. _Fuck._

"Morning, General," Duncan greets.

"Private Duncan," General Smith says, getting right to the point of his visit, "Tell me what you can about Courtney, here."

"Courtney," Duncan murmurs, looking at her, now that he finally knew her name. She gives him a small smile, and he notices she wasn't wearing her filthy nightgown anymore. Now she wore a pure white sundress with thin white straps, and her mother's gold wedding ring was still on her finger. Her hands were washed clean from his blood and most of the dirt had been wiped off her cheeks. The tangles in her hair had been combed out, though it was a bit stringy from sweat since she hadn't taken a shower yet, apparently. Still, Duncan was struck by how pretty she was.

He clears his throat and speaks up, "I first found her when I entered a room to snipe the Kirovsky Factory No. 501. She was hidden under a bed, clearly the only living person in her whole apartment building. I was shot by a sniper, and I took her with me down to Travis and Thomas, who brought me here. On the way here, though, I'm pretty sure Miss Courtney all but saved me from bleeding to death."

"And I'm sure you're very grateful," General Smith replies, and Duncan nods. "But why should be keep her here? We could put our camp in danger by hiding Jews here. And if we hide her, why not others? Sure, her father was a doctor and she may know a bit, but she barely knows English." The general motions to Courtney, who had a blank look on her face, once again lost in the conversation.

"She's an orphan," Duncan points out, "Her parents were dead in her apartment when I found her. Where else would she go? Are we going to send her to a concentration camp, where she'd surely be put to death?"

"We can't just focus all our time on keeping every single Jew in Germany safe. We have a specific mission we have to complete, then that's _it_! What about other orphaned Jews? I'm sure there's plenty of them," General Smith replies, glaring at Duncan, who glares back.

Courtney, unaware of the high tension around her, pipes up, "I know about the Nazi Army! The SS. I can help."

General Smith's eyes brighten at this, and he turns to her. "How much? How much do you know?" he asks eagerly.

Courtney shrugs. "I know… two or three cities… that they're planning to attack. That is good, yes?"

"Yes, yes, very good. But, as a German, why would you want to go against your country to help us Americans?" General Smith asks.

_"War remains the decisive human failure."_  
**- John Kenneth Galbraith**

Courtney bites her lip and looks back and forth between General Smith and Travis, clearly unaware how to word it in English. "I… I…," she tries, but then she breaks down and answers in German, "Wenn die deutsche Armee hasst mich und will mich umbringen, warum sollte ich mir die Mühe, ihnen zu helfen?"

Travis turns to General Smith and translates, "_If the German army hates me and wants to kill me, why should I bother to help them?_"

General Smith nods in agreement and Duncan adds, "In the apartment room, I also found a note, which was probably tied to a brick that was thrown through the window. It said '_Schmutzigen Juden_,' but I don't know what it means." Courtney frowns as she hears the message on the note.

"It means 'filthy Jew,'" Travis explains.

"And I can teach her English," Duncan offers. "I'll mainly be here anyway, recovering and getting rehab and shit. Then, while she's learning more and more English, she can also help out the nurses."

"Alright, I'll give you a week, Private. If the cities she tells us that are going to be attacked end up _not _being attacked, or if she's basically worthless as a nurse, she has to go. I don't care where she goes, but we can't keep her here if there's no use for her here," General Smith threatens.

"Thank you, Sir. You won't be disappointed," Duncan promises.

"I better not be," the general replies, exiting the tent. Travis nods at Duncan and tosses an English-to-German dictionary on his lap. Travis leaves the tent too, probably to continue the attack on the Kirovsky Factory No. 501. Courtney steps closer to Duncan and smiles wider than before, exposing bright white teeth.

"So I stay?" Courtney asks excitedly.

Duncan can't help but smile back at her excitement to stay in this hell-hole of a camp. "Yeah, for a week. If you tell the truth about the Nazi attacks and you're a good nurse," he assures her.

"Oh, I'm a good nurse," Courtney agrees, showing him the journal she was holding. She taps the cover, and Duncan obediently opens it, flipping through the pages. "My father's doctor notes," she explains.

"I bet you were very proud of him," Duncan guesses, looking up at her mesmerizing dark brown eyes. Suddenly her face clouds with remorse, and she nods sadly, taking the journal back from him.

A tall blonde nurse walks up to them with a handful of bandages. "Time to change your bandages, Duncan," she announces in her high sing-song voice.

Duncan makes a face. "Not now, Jennifer," he complains.

"Yes, _now_," Jennifer persists, putting one hand on her white nurse's uniform-clad hip. "We have to change the bandages on a fresh wound often so it won't get infected. The better it heals, the less often we'll have to change the bandages."

"How about Courtney does it?" Duncan suggests, tilting his head towards a shell-shocked Courtney. "She's a nurse, according to General Smith as of just a few minutes ago."

Jennifer looks warily back and forth between Courtney and Duncan, then she finally hands Courtney the white bandages. "Whatever, Duncan. I'm not putting up with any of your crap," she mumbles and walks off to take care of another patient.

"Why did you volunteer me?" Courtney exclaims, glaring at Duncan.

"You're a nurse now. Show me what you got, Princess," he challenges her, referring to her flowy dress for her new nickname.

Courtney squinted her eyes at him. "I'm not a princess, and the only things I've _got _are these bandages, if that's what you mean," she replies confidently, putting her hands full of the bandages on her hips.

Duncan laughs and starts to sit up to make it easier for her to change his bandages. Courtney exclaims, "No!" and jumps stop him from sitting up, but at the same time a sharp pain comes from his shoulder, causing him to grimace.

"Ugh!" Courtney exclaims, then starts rambling, "Sie müssen nicht sitzen, wenn ich Ihnen helfen, dumm Arsch! Jetzt hast du deine Schulter machte beginnen wieder an zu bluten! Was soll ich mit dir zu tun?"

Duncan just looked at her blankly. She bites her tongue and flips through her German-to-English dictionary to find the English equivalent of what she just said. Then she translates, "Sorry. I said, don't sit up unless I help you to. Now you've made your shoulder start bleeding." Courtney made sure to leave out the part where she called him a dumbass.

"Oh… I'm sorry."

"I forgive you," Courtney says, "Let's just change your bandages, yes?"

Courtney takes Duncan's warm hand in her cool one and drapes his arm over her shoulders. Then she puts her other hand on his lower back and she gently pulls him into a sitting position. Duncan watches Courtney as she tenderly removes his bandages. Her fingers agilely unwind the bandages and her tongue was at the corner of her mouth in concentration.

Courtney removes the last of the bandages and sucks air through her teeth. "Is it bad?" Duncan asks. She quickly throws the bandages away and picks up a clean cloth from a rack. She presses the cloth to Duncan's wound and he winces.

"Sorry. Ah… No. It will be fine, if you keep the wound closed," Courtney says slowly, applying a bit more pressure to his shoulder. "Where are you from?"

"New York City. Do you know where that is?" Duncan asks.

"In New York. How old are you?" Courtney continues. He chuckles at how straight-forward she is. "What?" she asks self-consciously.

Duncan just smirks and shakes his head at her. He puts his large hand on her hip and pulls her ear close to his mouth. Being so close to her, Duncan could tell that she smelled like a mixture of smoke, iron from the freshly washed-off blood, and something strange… vanilla. "I'm sixteen," he murmurs. Courtney pulls away and opens her mouth to say something, but Duncan pulls her back to where he can whisper, "Don't tell anybody. You have to be eighteen to be in the army, but I snuck in and I don't want to be sent back home."

This time, when Courtney pulls away, this time she looks at him in confusion. Clearly she'd lost him, so Duncan picks up Travis' English-to-German dictionary and says, "Es ist ein Geheimnis. Nicht erzähl niemandem." _It's a secret. Don't tell anybody._

Courtney laughs at him, and tries to smother it with her hand. "What?" Duncan asks. Courtney just nods, showing she understood him, and puts a finger to her lips. "I'm sixteen too," she whispers, then stands up like nothing happened and takes the bloody cloth off Duncan's wound. "But you have… a terrible accent." She starts laughing again and Duncan just smirks at her.

"At least I'm trying," he replies. Courtney takes a handful of gauze and holds it on his shoulder. She takes his hand and puts it on the gauze and Duncan holds it while she gets the bandages.

"Why don't you want to go home?" Courtney asks as she begins wrapping the bandages around his torso. As the bandages start to hold the gauze in place, Duncan lets go of it.

"It's… my parents. I don't like them, and they don't like me," Duncan explains, avoiding Courtney's eyes by watching her hands wrap his shoulder in bandages.

"Why not?"

"Um… well… Just don't feel sorry for me, okay?" Duncan asks, still not meeting her eyes. Courtney's hands drop from his shoulder and pick up her dictionary. She flips through it until she finds the words she wants, and marks the pages with her finger.

"Feel sorry for _you_?" Courtney asks. She looks back down at her dictionary and continues, "_I'm _the one with dead parents. I've been hoping you haven't been feeling sorry for me lately."

Duncan grins ruefully, looking up at her. "Okay, okay. My father was an alcoholic and my mother has a drug addiction. I have a messed up family."

"Why is your family messy?" Courtney asks, tying the final bandage over Duncan's shoulder.

"Messed up, not messy. Messed up as in weird or not right," Duncan explains. Courtney nods, though it was obvious by her look that she didn't quite understand.

"Like unusual?"

"Yes! Unusual in a bad way," Duncan says.

"Then I am messed up too."

"How are you messed up? You seem… perfect."

"I have to…," Courtney trails off, checking her dictionary, "Rely on strangers to stay alive. My only possessions are my books and clothes. And my country hates me."

"But that isn't your fault," Duncan points out as Courtney leans him back down. She shrugs dejectedly and so he continues, "How about that English lesson?"


	6. Texas Hold Em

**Courtney POV**

Courtney made a face, trying to pronounce her 'Th' sounds. But it kept coming out like a 'D' sound. "Ugh!" she exclaimed in annoyance.

"Okay, do what I do," Duncan instructs. He puts his tongue in between his upper and lower teeth and blows out a sharp exhale of breath to make the 'Th' sound.

Courtney sticks her tongue between her teeth and blows, but her cheeks just ended up puffing out. Duncan laughed and she put her face in her hands. "I must look silly," she moans.

"No, no, no," Duncan denies, wrapping a hand around her wrist and gently tugging her hand away from covering her face. "You're trying."

"I can't do it! My W's sound like V's, my V's sound like F's, my Th's sound like D's, my D's sound like T's, and my Ah's sound like Eh's! I'm terrible!" Courtney continues.

"But that's only your pronunciation. You know so many words. Your father must have taught you a lot, right?" Duncan asks.

"Whatever," Courtney replies, but it was pronounced 'Vetever,' proving her point even more. "He taught me some, but mainly my mother helped me."

"She did good," Duncan compliments. He smiles at Courtney, and she shyly smiles back. She opens her mouth to say something, but suddenly, Travis and that second American from the alley and two other guys from Duncan's troop bursts into the hospital tent.

"Duncaaan!" the second American cheers, waving around a bend-up deck of cards. Jennifer shushes him from across the tent, where she was surveying the sleeping patients. "Wanna go out and play some poker, buddy?"

"I don't know of I can…," Duncan replies, looking towards Courtney for permission.

"Let me check," Courtney answers, crossing the tent towards Jennifer. "Is Duncan allowed to go outside? For poker?"

"Sure. But you have to go with him everywhere to supervise to be sure he doesn't kill himself," Jennifer says, rolling her eyes.

"Why would he kill himself?" Courtney asks, shocked.

"It's an expression."

"But your face didn't move…"

"Not a _facial _expression. Just don't let him out of your sight."

Courtney knew no other meaning for the word 'expression' so she stands there confused. But Jennifer just scoffs and walks away, so Courtney goes back to Duncan and his friends. "You can play, but I have to go with," she reports, helping Duncan to sit up. From then on, he was able to do things without her help. But still, Courtney followed. She didn't want him to die if she stopped watching him.

The soldiers took seats on their own helmets or turned-over buckets that were all positioned around a crate. "Sit here, lil lady," said the second American, who set his helmet on the ground for her to sit on.

"Thank you. What is your name?" Courtney asks, taking a seat.

The American chuckles at her bluntness. "I'm Thomas. So, do you know how to play poker, babe?" he asks, shuffling the cards on top of the crate.

"I know Texas Hold'Em…"

"Good, cause that's what we're playing," Thomas replies, dealing out the two 'hole' cards to everyone. "But we're also playing for cigarettes. Anybody have any cigarettes?" He takes a few wrinkly cigarettes from his pocket and sets them in front of his cards.

"Just got some today," Travis says, putting down a whole pack of cigarettes in front of him. Duncan had a few from his pocket too, as did the other two soldiers. Travis takes three cigarettes from his pack and hands them to Courtney. "You owe me." She nods and smiles gratefully.

_"Do you love life? Then do not waste time, _  
_for that is the stuff life is made of." _  
**- Franklin**

"Don't look at your cards yet," Thomas warns, though they all already know how to play, "Time for the ante." The soldiers set one or two of their cigarettes, depending on how much they had to begin with, in the center of the crate. Courtney wasn't sure the English terms for poker, but she guessed that was the starting pot of the game.

Courtney sets out one of her three cigarettes in the pot, then once everybody has bet, they all peek at their cards. Courtney had a nine of diamonds and a nine of spades. Once everybody has looked, Thomas flips over three 'board' cards, called the 'flop.' They were a nine of hearts, queen of clubs, and ten of spades. So far she had a three-of-a-kind, which okay, but not great.

Courtney quickly scanned the solders' faces around her. Travis and another American had a pretty good poker faces, but Duncan was rubbing his stubbly jaw with one hand, which showed he was thinking hard to come up with a good grouping of cards. Thomas was biting his lip, which was also a bad sign. The other American had a good poker face, but his eyes were too shifty and bright. Courtney was sure he had a good hand; she had to beat him.

After the flop was another round of betting. Courtney threw another cigarette into the pot, mainly to make the others nervous. The shifty-eyed American and Travis also put in another cigarette, but the others left their bets as is. Thomas flipped over another card next to the other three that were already out, and that was called a 'turn.' It was a five of clubs.

There was a third round of betting after the turn, and Courtney put out her last cigarette. The shifty-eyed American was now looking at her suspiciously, but Courtney's father had helped her perfect her poker face. Thomas put out another card, called the 'river,' and now five cards were set out. The fifth 'board' card was a nine of clubs.

A shiver went up Courtney's spine, but she didn't move. She had a four-of-a-kind, the third-highest hand one could get in a game of Texas Hold 'Em, right after a royal flush and a straight flush. There was another round of betting, but Courtney had no more cigarettes to bet.

Then they all flipped their cards over to see who got the best hand. Courtney's well-trained eyes quickly skimmed over everybody else's cards, and found her four-of-a-kind to be the winning hand. She smiles and reaches for the pot, but Thomas grabs her wrist. "No, I got a full house," he tells her slowly, tapping his cards with his pointer finger.

"Four-of-a-kind," Courtney replies even slower, tapping her cards too. Thomas pulls away in surprise and the other soldiers burst out in laughter, jeers, congratulations, and gasps of surprise.

Courtney caught Duncan's eyes from across the crate and he smirks at her, chuckling a bit. She smiles shyly and glances down, into her lap. Then Courtney collects the pot and pulls it towards herself, quickly counting her winnings in her head. She won a grand total of sixteen cigarettes, counting the three cigarettes she bet too, each in various states of wear.

Courtney and the soldiers played several more games. Every now and then more soldiers would stop by to join in on a new game and gamble their own cigarettes, hoping to win a few before quitting. By the end of their games, though, the sun was starting to set and a trumpet called from somewhere in the camp.

The trumpet player, whoever it was, started playing a melody that echoed through the camps. All of a sudden, the soldiers around Courtney stood up and started singing. She looked around the camp to try to decipher what was going on, and she saw soldiers saluting or putting their hands on their heart all around the camp; in the tents, out in the courtyard, everywhere. The air was filled with the voice of hundreds of men.

"From the Halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli; We fight our country's battles in the air, on land, and sea; First to fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean; We are proud to claim the title of UNITED STATES MARINES," the men sing with delight. Courtney heard 'United States' out of the lyrics, and she assumed it was an Army song.

The soldiers continue, "Our flag's unfurled to every breeze, from dawn to setting sun; We have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun; In the snow of far off northern lands and in sunny tropic scenes; You will find us always on the job - The UNITED STATES MARINES."

"Here's health to you and to our Corps which we are proud to serve; In many a strife we've fought for life and never lost our nerve; If the Army and the Navy ever look on Heaven's scenes; They will find the streets are guarded by UNITED STATES MARINES," they finish, and a large roar of cheers resonates throughout the camp. Now that the song was over, the soldiers start dispersing away from the crate and more towards the mess hall.

Courtney catches Travis' arm before he walks away and hands him four cigarettes as payback for what he loaned her, plus an extra. She had lost a few cigarettes from her first big win, since after that the other soldiers had started playing more carefully around her, but she still got off with some winnings. "Thanks," Travis says gratefully, and continues on towards the mess hall after Courtney nods at him.

Then Courtney sets the rest of the cigarettes on the crate in front of Duncan and states, "Here." Duncan looks up at her, his eyes a mixture of anticipation and confusion.

"What are these for?"

"I don't smoke," Courtney excuses, shrugging her shoulders a bit. Duncan hesitates at taking the cigarettes and she nods in verification. He takes the cigarettes in his fist and shoves them in his pocket for later.

"Thanks," Duncan replies, sure that he'd be able to get Courtney to start smoking by the end of this experience. "So, how'd you get so good at poker?"

"My father."

He nods with his hands in his pockets, even the hand with the hurt shoulder, even though that might be semi-uncomfortable. "I kinda figured that. Got any tips for an amateur like me?"

Courtney wasn't so sure what 'amateur' meant, but since he was asking for poker-playing tips, she could pretty much guess. "I… can't explain much," she excuses, because for what she wanted to say, she didn't know most of the words. But Courtney continued, "You watch their eyes and facial expressions. Look for their body posture, if their hands are trembling, and their attitude. Especially attitude. If they act confident, they have a bad hand. If they act unconfident, they have a good hand. Keep a good poker face."

Duncan nods and glances at the mess hall, which was starting to become packed with soldiers. Courtney looks over his shoulder at the busy place and suggests, "Do you want to go eat? Jennifer says I have to be with you at all times."

"Sure, I'm starving," Duncan replies. He turns towards the mess hall and hears Courtney's footsteps behind him. She follows him up the wooden stairs and through the propped-open doors into the mess hall. Courtney looked around at the ravenous young men in army uniforms and couldn't help but feel a little intimidated. She stuck close to Duncan's side so she wouldn't be lost in the crowd.

As Duncan navigates between the tables that were swarming with soldiers, somebody accidentally bumps into Courtney and Duncan starts getting away from her. "Sorry!" she exclaims to whoever she hit, and she scrambles forward towards Duncan. When she catches up to Duncan, she slips her hand into his so she wouldn't be split up from him anytime soon. His fingers twitch in surprise, but he holds her grip.

Eventually Duncan leads her to the very back of the mess hall, where there was a long cafeteria-style table in front of a kitchen. The chefs were constantly putting out more and more food for the steady stream of soldiers. He hands her a tray and they move through the line. Once Courtney and Duncan had gotten their meal, which consisted of corn beef, a biscuit, and a cup of strong-smelling liquor, Courtney follows Duncan through the crowd once more to find a place to eat.

But then Courtney sees Jennifer among a couple other nurses, all dressed in their stark white uniforms. "I'm going to eat with Jennifer," she tells Duncan, having to speak a louder than usual for him to hear her over the din of the mess hall. He nods and Courtney turns away from him, heading towards Jennifer to try to get acquainted with the other nurses.


	7. Do You Like Her?

**Duncan POV**

Duncan was half-glad that Courtney decided to make friends with the other nurses, so that would mean she didn't have to follow him around like a lost little puppy. But then again, he almost enjoyed her presence. She had a certain loveable air around her that made him feel more optimistic about things.

Duncan carried his tray one-handed out the mess hall door to the usual spot where he and his friends would sit. Thomas and Travis sat around the edge of the camp, leaning against thick tree trunks, eating and laughing, along with a few other soldiers. He took a seat next to Thomas and started eating the corn beef, or 'Bully Beef,' as it was nicknamed in the camp for no apparent reason.

"Damn, that German chick is hot. You say she's the new nurse?" Thomas asks, getting straight to the point. He lights a cigarette and takes a long drag, since he was already finished with dinner. Travis and the other two soldiers were deep in a conversation about snail mail.

"Yeah, apparently her father was a doctor and he passed it on to her. She doesn't know much English though, and I'm teaching her," Duncan explains. He looks down at his empty tray in surprise. He hadn't known how hungry he actually was until all the food was gone.

"Speaking of English, her accent kills," Thomas continues. He nudges Duncan's side and snickers. "And I guess what they say about German girls having huge chests is pretty true, huh?"

Duncan almost choked on his shot of vodka and he gives Thomas a look. "What the hell?" Duncan exclaims in shock. He pulls a cigarette and a lighter from his pocket, and holds the cigarette in his lips while he works to light it. He cups the end of the cigarette with his hand, inhales, and lights the cigarette.

"Dude, don't even try to deny it. You know it's true. And sheesh, sensitive much? What, do you like her or something?"

Duncan was silent for a while as he sits there, smoking. Then after he blows out a plume of smoke, he admits, "Fine. You're right. I can't say I haven't noticed her, um, assets. But I don't like her like that. Trust me. She practically saved my life and I think I owe her enough to not -"

"Didn't you save her life too?" Thomas interrupts. "Didn't you take her out of her apartment? Wouldn't she have gone straight to a concentration camp if you hadn't found her first?"

"Well, yeah, but then I got shot-"

"So you saved her life and she saved yours," Thomas interrupts yet again. "It's fair game, dude."

"No, no it's not," Duncan denies. "It's different. General Smith wouldn't like me hitting on one of the nurses." Not to mention Duncan would feel guilty if he did. He didn't know why, but it felt like he would be taking advantage of Courtney.

_What, do you like her or something?_

"Listen, man," Thomas says, putting his hand on his friend's good shoulder and pulling him closer to himself. "I've been seeing Jennifer ever since this war has started and we've been at this camp. The general never knows. I even fucked her one time in these very woods, behind the hospital tent."

"Really? I thought you had a girlfriend back home."

Thomas lets go of Duncan's shoulder and relaxes against the tree behind him. He shrugs, takes a puff of his cigarette, and says nonchalantly, "Eh, I caught her cheating on me anyway. She doesn't know I know about it. Besides, she's probably seeing that bastard all the time, now that I'm a whole ocean away. We'll break up formally when I get back, even though we're pretty much broken up anyway."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Nah, Jennifer's great," Thomas replies dreamily. Then his mood turns sour and he adds, "Way better than that bitch back home."

Duncan nods as an uncomfortable silence fell upon them. Or at least upon Duncan. Thomas just sat there contently, staring at the stars that were starting to poke through the purple sky and smoking his cigarette, which was growing shorter by the second. Eventually Duncan stood up and saluted his friend. "Well, see ya tomorrow, Thomas."

"Will do," Thomas answers back, and Duncan walks up to the doors of the mess hall. He puts his empty tray on top of the stack that was already growing, turns around, and begins the trek back to the hospital tent.

His cigarette putters out and so he tosses it on the ground, smashing it to ashy bits with his boot. Duncan flips the tent flap back and walks in, over to his cot. He unstraps his boots and collapses onto his pillow. Half the nurses, who would be eating dinner later on, since there still had to be somebody watching the patients, were distributing the meals to the bed-ridden soldiers. Other cots were left empty from the soldiers who could take themselves to the mess hall without the aid of a nurse.

Duncan's shoulder was starting to throb again so he covers himself with the bed sheets and attempts to fall asleep. Soon he hears the tent flap pushed aside as people entered the tent. He opened his eyes just enough to look through his eyelashes to see Courtney walk in with Jennifer and a few other nurses. Courtney was carrying her knapsack and books, which she must have gotten from a storage place from when she first got here. The other nurses leave for their supper and Duncan watches Courtney walk within a yard or two of him.

_What, do you like her or something?_

Duncan shook his head minutely to rid himself of Thomas' voice. Through his eyelashes, he could see Courtney look at him with concern. She probably thought he was moving in his sleep because of shoulder pain… But she has no idea. Duncan tries his best to keep still, making his chest rise up and down rhythmically.

Convinced he was in no need of painkillers, Courtney passed through the tent partition which led to a separate room in the hospital tent, the nurses' bedroom. Since his cot was so close to the bedroom, Duncan could hear Courtney unpacking, though she had very little to unpack. Then he heard bed sheets rustling and he figured she was starting to go to sleep. A little after that, Duncan fell into a fitful sleep himself.

It was no surprise to him that he dreamed of the sniper. He could see the bullet piercing through the air towards him, but he couldn't move, even though he now knew what was coming. The bullet went through his shoulder and Duncan fell to the ground. Then came his ruse. He held up his helmet on his gun and the bullet hit the helmet, knocking it out of the window and to the ground. But this time, when Duncan looked up to see if the sniper fell for it, he saw the sniper aiming his gun at him. Duncan had no time to react before a bullet whizzed through the air and hit him right in the forehead.

_"War is eternity jammed into frantic minutes that _  
_will fill a lifetime with dreams and nightmares."_  
**- John Cory**

Duncan lurched and sat up at straight as a board in his cot. He was breathing heavily and his shoulder throbbed painfully like a bitch. He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths and he leaned back against his pillow once he was mostly calmed down. Then all was quiet, and Duncan could barely make out a strange noise.

He stared blankly into the corner of the dark tent, trying to figure out what the noise was and where it was coming from. "Mmrm!" the noise murmurs. Duncan turns his head towards the noise and figured out it was coming from the nurses' bedroom. _Courtney?, _he thinks.

Duncan quietly sits up, pushes his bed sheets off of him, and climbs out of his cot. He tip-toes towards the tent partition and the murmuring definitely got more noticeable. He slowly pushed back the flap and went in the room. There were twelve cots, and all of them were occupied by nurses. Duncan's gaze locked on Courtney, who was curled up on her cot in a corner of the room.

She starts mumbling again and he hears, "Mami! Papa! Nein!" He had no idea what she was saying, but she sounded pretty traumatized by it. Duncan looked around the bedroom at the nurses, but apparently none of them could hear Courtney's outbursts… Yet. Duncan's blood turned to ice at what he heard next.

"Der Fuhrer!" Courtney moans, twisting in her bed sheets. He knew exactly what, or who, she meant by that. Hitler. Then she started crying. Quite loudly, Duncan may add. "Nein, Duncan, nein!" He quickly crossed the room to her and sat down at the edge of her cot. He had to keep her quiet so the other nurses wouldn't wake up. And to see what was wrong.

_What, do you like her or something?_

He reached out and put his hand on her bare shoulder to gently shake her awake; she was wearing a dark red spaghetti-strap top and long cream-colored pajama pants. Courtney jumped at his touch and her eyes flash open. Her eyes focus on him and realization floods her face.

Courtney scrambles out of the entangling bed sheets and flings her arms around Duncan's neck. Even in her fresh-out-of-sleep state, she was still careful of his injured shoulder. Her sudden frantic movement surprised Duncan and he sat there stiffly in shock for a few seconds before he relaxed and put his arms around her, hugging her as she cried against his chest. "Duncan, Duncan," she sniffled.


	8. The Nightmare

**Courtney POV**

Courtney was sleeping in her cot in the hospital bed when she was woken up by two dark-clothed figures. One of them wrapped his arm around her and clamped his hand over her mouth, so she couldn't scream. The other one led the way back out of the tent and outside, into the camp courtyard where the moonlight lit up the red swastika bands on their arms. Nazi troops. They tossed Courtney into the back of a truck and she hits her head on something hard, and from then on everything was black.

When her head finally cleared, she woke up in front of a large pit. She couldn't see the bottom since she was too far away. Courtney looked around herself to see wood and barbed-wire fences, ramshackle houses, and guard towers in the light from the full moon. It looked to be like a concentration camp. Courtney turns around and sees that her mother, father, and Duncan had all been lined up in front of the pit. The two Nazi soldiers who kidnapped her were standing on either side of her.

A third Nazi soldier walks up to her mother from behind one of the crude houses. Suddenly Courtney sees a gun in his hand. She tried to call out to her mother, but her mouth couldn't open. She tried to move, but her feet were rooted to the spot. The Nazi holds the gun up to her mother and shoots her right in the chest. Her mother falls backwards into the pit. Then the Nazi repeats the same thing to her father.

Suddenly Courtney could speak again.

"Mami! Papa! Nein!" she cries. _Mother! Father! No! _The Nazi turns toward her as he hears her voice and Courtney gasps as she sees his face. Sees the smooth black hair, cold brown eyes, and square mustache. "Der Fuhrer!"

Hitler smiled coldly at her and turned around, raising the gun to Duncan. "Nein, Duncan, nein!" Courtney yells, sobs escaping her throat. _No, Duncan, no! _Hitler shoots, and Duncan falls back into the pit. Courtney runs up to the edge and looks down, discovering the pit was actually a mass grave. Dozens of dead Jews looked up at her with their dark, blank eyes. She closed her eyes against the gruesome sight.

And that's when something touched her shoulder.

Courtney jumped and her eyes whipped open, certain Hitler was going to push her into the pit. But then her eyes adjust to her surroundings and she realizes she was back in the nurses' bedroom. Duncan sat on the edge of her cot, safe and sound.

Courtney gasped and scrambled to get her legs untangled from her bed sheets. She tosses the sheets aside and throws her arms around Duncan's warm neck, carefully avoiding the bandages covering his right shoulder. She burrows her face in his chest and cries, not caring how ridiculous she might look. "Duncan, Duncan," she whimpered.

His arms wrap around her waist as he comforts her. Duncan gently lifts her into his lap so she was straddling his hips, and Courtney was still too terrified from her nightmare to scold him about not lifting things that might strain his shoulder. "Shh," Duncan murmurs into her hair, "You'll be okay." His deep baritone voice reverberated in her chest and sent shivers up her spine. Courtney tried to control her breathing, taking in ragged breaths.

But the next deep breath she took sent her into yet another wave of tears. Duncan started rocking back and forth and gently rubbed his hand up and down her back. Eventually Courtney's tears subsided and she resorted to sniffling every minute or so.

"I-I had a dream wh-where you-," Courtney began, but was cut off by Duncan, who put a finger to her lips to silence her.

"Let's not talk about your dream. It was only a dream, and will never happen. Ever. Trust me," Duncan promises her, even though he had no idea what her dream was about.

But Courtney knew. She knew that if Duncan was somehow captured by the Nazis and they somehow found out that he had helped her in her apartment… They would kill him. Possibly even torture him. Kill him for being an American, and worse, somebody who helps Jews.

Courtney could barely look at him, knowing she could possibly, somehow, maybe, be responsible for his death. She looked down into her lap. But clearly Duncan had other ideas. He lifted her chin up with one finger so she was now looking at him. "How about an English lesson?" he asks, "Make this noise: Thh."

Courtney giggles half-heartedly and leans her head against his chest again. "Thh," she attempts, but it ended up sounding more like 'duh.' This time it was Duncan's turn to chuckle, and it made his chest shake, which in turn made her head shake. "Try again," he urges her, and they spend the next hour working on her English in quiet whispers so as to not wake up the other nurses.

The next morning, Courtney finds herself neatly tucked into her cot. She lay in bed for a few minutes thinking hard about whether or not she put herself to sleep, but all she could remember was drowsily leaning against Duncan's good shoulder… Which means she most likely fell asleep and he was the one who tucked her in. Courtney mentally kicked herself for first crying all over him and then making him put her to sleep like that.

But then again, he caught her in a moment of weakness.

Courtney climbs out of bed and sees most of the nurse cots empty. She sees a white nurse's uniform draped across her cot and she smiles as she picks it up. She was finally a full-fledged nurse, now that she had the uniform. Courtney quickly undressed and put the uniform on.

It was a tight white long-sleeved dress that stopped mid-thigh. It had buttons from the bottom all the way to the V-neck. There were two pockets on each hip and on one breast was a nametag with her name already written on. Also on the bed was a crisp white nurse's hat with a red cross in the middle, which Courtney placed on her head.

She leaves the nurses' bedroom through the tent partition flap and heads over to Duncan, meaning to apologize to him. Courtney gives him a shy smile and says, "Listen, sorry about last night. I didn't mean to be like that…"

Courtney blushes, not quite knowing how to express what she wanted to say, as she unwinds Duncan's bandages. He was now able to sit up on his own. Courtney checks his shoulder wound and Duncan replies, "No, I liked sitting with you."

She pursed her lips, having a hard time believing that, but she said nothing to disagree. Right after Courtney had just finished wrapping up his shoulder, Duncan takes out a Polaroid camera from his duffel bag underneath his bed. "Smile," he announced, lifting the camera up and taking a picture of Courtney.

"What was that for?" she asked curiously, leaning over the shoulder as they waited for the picture to appear on the Polaroid picture. Soon her face started to appear, and her smile lit up the picture.

"I like it," Duncan admits, looking up at Courtney and smirking, which made her blush. Courtney took the camera from him and bent over next to him on his cot. Duncan put his arm around her waist and she snapped the picture.

As they were waiting for it to dry, Duncan explained, "My ma has always wanted to visit Germany. But with the war, that obviously didn't happen. So she told me to take this camera to take pictures of the scenery… Though not much 'scenery' is left, since most of it is just rubble from all the bombs. And now I have a bunch of leftover film, so I figured I would just take pictures of the people I met." The picture dried, their figures appeared, and they smiled. She really liked the picture.

_"I will not follow where the path may lead, _  
_but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail."_  
**- Muriel Strule**

Without saying anything else, Courtney turned away and went up to Jennifer. Last night, while eating supper, Jennifer had told Courtney she'd be getting another patient to tend to besides Duncan. Apparently her nursing efforts had proven satisfactory.

Jennifer clearly knew what Courtney was about to ask, because she points towards a blonde healthy-looking man in the middle of the tent and says, "You'll be taking care of Sam. He lost both his legs in a land mine explosion. We're mainly keeping him on painkillers and antibiotics until he's moved to a larger hospital." Then Jennifer turns away to continue sorting drugs in the medicine cabinet.

Courtney walked towards Sam, whom she guessed was hiding his missing legs under the bed sheets. "Hi, Sam, I'm Courtney," she introduces herself, smiling warmly.

"I knew I'd be getting you as a nurse," Sam replies, smirking at her. Courtney glanced at Duncan across the tent and thinks, _Does every soldier here know how to smirk? _

"Why did you think that?" Courtney asks.

"Ich weiß wie man Deutsch sprechen," he says. _I know how to speak German. _Sam even had a very authentic German accent.

"Are you part German?"

"I'm about a quarter German, on my mom's side," Sam answers. "So, hey, could I have a little more Morphine? I'm starting to feel a bit in my legs."

Courtney nods and retrieves some Morphine for him. She knew it wasn't uncommon for a soldier who had a missing or amputated limb to feel like the limb was still attached to their body, albeit in a distorted and painful position. It was called Phantom Limb Syndrome, and occurred in around seventy-five percent of soldiers missing a limb. Soon Sam started dozing off under the influence of some very heavy drugs, so Courtney headed back to Duncan to begin the rehabilitation of his shoulder.


	9. Air Raid

**Duncan POV**

The whole next week passed without incident. Duncan's shoulder was healing nicely, and he could almost start putting weight on it. He could definitely hold things with it, though. And Courtney was still taking care of Sam. Trucks couldn't come to take him to a larger hospital because of all the Nazi activity in this area of Germany.

But Courtney was still having her nightmares.

She would wake up swimming in her bed, murmuring fitfully, and drowning in the flood of sheets. It would usually be quite a while before the crying stopped. At those times, in the enormous mileage of sleep, Courtney had never felt so completely alone. Possibly the only good to come out of these nightmares was that it brought Duncan into the room, to soothe her, to love her. He came in every night and sat with her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his _thereness _when she needed him. She knew Duncan would always come mid-cry, and he would not leave. She would cry into his chest and every morning, just after two o'clock, she would fall asleep to the smell of him. It was a mixture of cigarette smoke, stale cologne, earth, and him. Each morning, she'd wake up to find herself tucked safely into bed, and Duncan back in his own cot. Sometimes, if Courtney was the first nurse awake, she would push back the sheets, get dressed, and cautiously kiss his cheek. Duncan would wake up and smile.

One night, Duncan had come in to sit with Courtney yet again because of her nightmares. She was in his lap and had just stopped crying when he looked down at her and assumed she was troubled by something, from the thoughtful expression on her face. His fingers pinch a stray piece of her hair, and he gently tucks it behind her ear. "Courtney, what's wrong?" Duncan whispers. For a while, she said nothing. She was thinking, despite already knowing. A sixteen-year-old girl is many things, but she is not stupid.

Duncan hadn't shaved for a few days and he rubbed the scratchy whiskers on his jaw every two or three minutes as Courtney waited to tell him. His teal eyes were flat and calm, slightly warm, as they always were when it came to Courtney. "I think I'm going to hell," she confesses to him. Duncan's soft breathing blew across the blanket on her cot and she reaches up and kisses his scratchy cheek. "You need a shave," she continues.

"You're not going to hell," he replies. For a few moments, Courtney watches his face. Then she leaned into his shoulder and slowly began dozing off. But before she completely fell asleep, Courtney's gaze locked on his white scar on the under-side of his jaw. Her index finger traces a fiery path over it.

"What's this from?"

Duncan's eyes glazed over as he thought back to his childhood, the day he got the scar. The local playground was where they would fight. A tight circle of a crowd would gather around them, demanding they fight, and neither boy was about to argue. They fought like champions. A trickle of blood ran from Duncan's mouth. He tasted it, and it tasted good. He enjoyed the tight circles and the unknown. The bitter-sweetness of uncertainty: To win or to lose. It was a feeling in the stomach that would be stirred around until he thought he could no longer tolerate it. The only remedy was to move forward and throw punches. Money was clutched in dirty fingers, and the bets were made. There was such a joy and fear there, such brilliant commotion, and the adrenaline would last for a while even after the fight was over.

The fighters were clenched with the intensity of the moment, their faces loaded up with expression, exaggerated with the stress of it. The wide-eyed concentration. After a minute or so of testing each other out, they began moving closer and taking risks. It was a street fight after all, they didn't have all day. Even with punch after punch, Duncan moved forward. Blood discolored his lips. It would soon be dried across his teeth. There was a roar when he was knocked down after an uppercut to the jaw that knocked his head back, dizzying him. Duncan was rarely knocked down. Money was almost exchanged, but he stood up. One last punch square on the nose, and his opponent was down. The circle counted. They always counted, just in case. Voices and numbers. His opponent finally stood up, after time had ran out, and sullenly raised Duncan's arm in victory.

"A fight," Duncan finally murmurs, looking down at Courtney to see what she would say about that. But apparently his daydream had taken longer than he thought. She was already asleep on his shoulder, her small mouth gaping open innocently.

Duncan gently lifted her off his lap, careful not to wake her up. He laid her head down on her pillow, her hair cascading across the silky white pillowcase. Then he tucked the bed sheets around her, and almost stood up, but he realized her fingers were still clutching his black skull T-shirt.

Duncan's shoulder had healed to the point where he was now allowed to put a shirt on himself instead of having to sit with a half-bare torso all the time. His skull shirt was from his younger years, when he wore the baggy thing to scare off potential street-fight competitors. Now he had grown so big that the shirt comfortably hugged his muscles, and he definitely didn't want to grow any more so that the shirt would become too small and he'd have to get rid of the thing. There was a history to it.

He tenderly unhooked Courtney's hand from his shirt and let her hand fall onto the pillow, next to her head. Duncan left the nurse's bedroom as quietly and skillfully as the criminal he was. Not that he ever told Courtney that part of his past… Even though he had gotten pretty close to telling her tonight. He had no idea what she would think of him anymore.

Duncan had just climbed back into his bed and was feeling remorseful about not being able to carve his skulls since his prized skull was hidden in his old bunk when the radio crackled to life. The radio, which was propped on a small table next to the tent entrance, was tuned into a nearby Berlin radio station. One of the soldiers in the camp would translate the German news into English, and broadcast it throughout the camp. That specific station, though, only told of German and English army victories and, of course, bomb threats. The radio was always turned up at a volume loud enough to alert them for a bomb threat, though Duncan desperately hoped it was just news of a new battle won. The radio would make a cuckoo sound, signaling an air raid, and then it would list the cities at risk.

But then the radio started cuckoo-ing.

Duncan jumped out of bed, adrenaline pulsing through his veins. _Not a bomb threat!, _he thought, _Not now! _The rest of the soldiers sleeping in the hospital tent jumped awake at the sound of the cuckoo by the time Duncan was already on his feet. He pushes his way through the tent partition back into the nurses' bedroom. Duncan's hand shoved Courtney's shoulder gently as she slept. "Courtney, wake up. We have to go," Duncan announced.

_"We make war that we may live in peace."_  
**- Aristotle**

There was the disorientation of disrupted sleep, and Courtney could barely decipher the outline of his face in the darkness, since her eyes weren't adjusted to the darkness yet, like they had been after her nightmare. Other nurses were already streaming out of the room, out to get the patients to safety. Courtney stood up drowsily and Duncan took her hand and half-dragged her out of the hospital tent. The nurses were getting all the injured soldiers into their wheelchairs, on their crutches, anything to get them mobile.

Outside, the radios in each tent howled at the sleeping soldiers, and men poured out of their tents into the dark. The courtyard was nearly full of disoriented, half-asleep soldiers. The night sky looked on. Some looked back, trying to find the tin-can planes as they drove across the sky. The camp was so close to Berlin that the bombs could very well miss-hit and strike their camp instead. "Duncan!" Thomas calls to his friend, jogging over. He was wearing a white wife-beater and gray sweats.

Thomas looked down at Duncan and Courtney's intertwined hands and smirks at Duncan, which he ignores. Now was no time for 'I-told-you-so's, if it was even that. "Are the bomb shelters full already?" Duncan asks. He desperately wanted to get Courtney to the safety of one of those shelters.

"The mess hall shelter is full, but I think the one behind the bathrooms still have room," Thomas explains, so the three of them half-run towards the bathrooms. Behind the building was a concrete staircase leading down into the ground, to protection from the bombs. There was a semi-large crowd around the stairs, and Duncan bites his lip, wondering if there would be enough room for them all.

"We need more air-raid shelters," Duncan tells Thomas. Often times soldiers just had to go back to sleep in their bunks and wait out the bombs, which would provide them zero protection, since there was little room for every single soldier in the shelters.

"What, basements?"

"No, attics," Duncan replies sarcastically. Then he snaps, "Of course basements."

Finally the line got shorter and the three of them made it into the shelter. Duncan led Courtney to a more empty corner of the solid-concrete room. There was only one bare lightbulb hanging from the middle of ceiling as their light source. Minutes passed by until they finally had to close the doors to the shelter because it was so packed.

Duncan didn't know how long they had been standing there in the silence by the time one soldier began singing God Bless America. One by one, everybody joined in… Everybody except Courtney, who didn't know the lyrics. Some of the men closed their eyes, waiting for the signal for the air-raid to be over from the radios a few soldiers brought from their tents, others just stared at one another. Suddenly a deep boom echoed throughout the shelter. Everybody jumped, some shouted, and Courtney quickly cowered against Duncan's chest.

The explosion had sounded far-off in the distance, but it still put everybody on edge. Air pressure shoved itself down like a ceiling, as if to mash them into the earth. Duncan adjusted his jaw to pop his ears to ease the pressure.

They stayed down in the air-raid shelter for at least another half hour waiting for more bombs, which never came. Courtney was still huddled against Duncan's chest and his arms were still around her waist. Only when the all-clear signal on the radio sounded did they break apart.

The now wide-awake soldiers shuffled out of the bomb shelter and back into the courtyard of the camp. Duncan and Courtney head back into the hospital tent and suddenly Courtney grips Duncan's shirt sleeve and asks worriedly, "Will there be another air-raid tonight?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," Duncan lies.

"Well, if there is, you'll wake me up again, right?"

"Of course."

"Promise?"

Duncan looks into Courtney's deep brown eyes and realizes how dependent she was on him. How much she trusted him, trusted him with her life. He blinks and murmurs, "Yes. I promise."

But there were no more bombs that night.


	10. You're Worth a Lot

**Courtney POV**

By the time a week has passed after the first air-raid, Duncan had started a sort of "midnight class" to teach Courtney English. The midnight class began at the end of each nightmare. Somehow Duncan had gotten hold of a book called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. They read through the early hours of the morning, circling and writing and reciting the words she did not know. It was about a girl named Francie Nolan who learns the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny. Courtney could tell Duncan didn't like it much, but Courtney was crazy about it. He seemed to deal with it, though.

Most of the time, however, their midnight class would get off track. Sometimes they would start talking about Duncan's parents, which was always morbid and depressing. Sometimes they would talk about Courtney's parents, and she would share all her precious memories of them. And sometimes their conversations would take such a complicated turn that they would both have to carefully construct their sentences straight out of their dictionaries.

Courtney had a way with words, and even Duncan could admit that. She could easily get him to confess anything, even without his knowing that the conversation was going to take such a turn. And she definitely used that to her advantage.

"Where did you get that scar from?" Courtney asks, trailing her finger along the scar on the under-side of Duncan's jaw. There would be no chance of her falling asleep again without getting her answer, because she was now wide awake from their midnight class.

Quite reluctantly, Courtney could tell, Duncan told her the story of how he got the scar from a street fight. She listened intently, and after the story was over he nervously looked over at her. Courtney was silent for a few seconds before she finally asked, "Were you good?"

Clearly that wasn't the response Duncan was expecting, because he stuttered, "Oh. Uh, well, yeah. I was good. One of the best."

She nods and points towards another, longer, scar underneath his ear. "Is that how you got that one too?" she asks.

Suddenly Duncan's eyes turned dark and he anxiously covered his scar with his hand, biting his lip. "Um, no. Well, you know how my dad is an alcoholic? When he first started drinking, he couldn't hold his liquor as much as he can now. One day… He came home really smashed and really mad about something. And then he just started beating me," Duncan admitted. He looked down at his hands in his lap, and Courtney was silent, which urged him to continue.

"I was only eight at the time. He kept yelling, 'It's all your fault! You're useless, pathetic, worthless!' Stuff like that. He beat me until I passed out. After that, I started learning how to fight. I actually almost wanted him to hit me again so I could take him down, especially by the time I had grown bigger than him. But he only beat me that one time," Duncan finishes.

Courtney nodded, just tiny movements of her head, staring into the distance. What bothered her most about what she just heard was what Duncan's father had said to him, and what possible impact it may have had on Duncan from him saying, 'You're useless, pathetic, worthless!'

Because there most definitely was value in Duncan, and it did not go unnoticed by Courtney Ramsden. She saw it immediately. His manner. The mysterious air around him. Whenever Duncan would come to sit with her after a nightmare, Courtney would observe the strangeness of his eyes. They were made of kindness, and a warm sort of blue-green that can only be found in shallow lake waters. Courtney, upon seeing those eyes, understood that Duncan Mason was valuable beyond explanation.

Courtney looked up at Duncan, into his deep turquoise eyes and leaned against his side. "You're not useless. Or pathetic. And you're definitely not worthless. To me, you're worth a lot," she whispers.

And then, Courtney wasn't sure if she was the one who leaned in or if it was Duncan or even both of them at the same time, but suddenly they were kissing. Duncan's hand landed on her waist and pulled her closer, while Courtney put a hand on his shoulder and pressed herself hard against his chest. Somehow they couldn't manage to get close enough to each other.

_"Love don't come so easily, this doesn't have to end in tragedy. _  
_I have you and you have me. _  
_We're one in a million, why can't you see? _  
_I treat you like a princess, but our life is just one big mess."_  
**- Rooney**

Their lungs quickly ran out of air, however, and when they both pulled apart they sat there breathing heavily for air, looking at each other with surprised expressions like, _Did we really just do that?_

Courtney bit her lip and Duncan quickly stood up from the cot. He suddenly couldn't risk the urge of being so close to her. "I, uh, better get going," he stuttered.

"Yeah," Courtney replies, her voice thick. She clears her throat and continues, "You… should." Duncan just nods at her and backs out of the nurses' bedroom with the book in his hands. Courtney squeezed her trembling hands together.

_Why did I do that?_

Courtney fell back onto her pillow, shaking her head in remorse. How could she have been so selfish? She was risking Duncan's safety just by being in this camp! If Nazis invaded, they would definitely be able to tell Courtney was a Jew just by her dark hair and thick German accent. If only Courtney could do something to help her side, her side being the Allies, of course.

Suddenly, Courtney sat straight up in bed. She knew exactly what would help. She tossed the bed sheets off of her and runs on her tiptoes out of the nurses' bedroom and out of the hospital tent into the courtyard. Courtney knew Duncan wasn't asleep yet, and he was probably wondering where she was going. _Good_. A little curiosity wouldn't kill him.

Courtney looks around the courtyard in the darkness. Everything looked so different, she wondered if she would even be able to find her way to the general's tent. But she would find her way. Courtney walked around for a few minutes and all of a sudden knew where she was. By the mess hall.

She turned around sharply to follow her steps back to the general's tent. But as she turned around, Courtney found the barrel of a gun in her face. She squeaked in silent terror and looked wide-eyed at the guard who had been patrolling the camp grounds.

"State your name and business," the guard snaps.

"Courtney Ramsden. I work in the hospital tent in camp. I have confidential information for the general," she answers right away, barely having to think of the translation from German to English in her head. Apparently her midnight classes with Duncan had been paying off… Not that she was _dependent_ on him, or anything.

The soldier looked at her suspiciously, so Courtney continued boldly, "Can we hurry this up? I really need to get to the general." She was surprised this guard hadn't seen her around camp before this incident.

He nods in the direction of the general's tent, allowing Courtney to go. As she walks off, he slowly lowers his gun and watches her warily. Courtney finally reaches the general's tent and looks back just before she went in. The soldier was still watching her in the place she left him at.

Courtney went in the tent and a different secretary from before looked up at her. This was probably the night secretary. "I have confidential information for the general. It's urgent," Courtney announces. The secretary immediately, probably happy for something to do in the middle of the night, while everybody was sleeping. The secretary disappears through the tent partition that led not to the general's office, but to his bedroom. Soon she comes back out and looks at Courtney.

"He'll be out in a second."

Courtney stood there, waiting, probably for the general to get dressed and decent. Eventually the general comes out of the bedroom and motions for his office. They walk in and the general takes a seat behind his desk. "I've been waiting for you," he tells her.

Courtney nods, knowing she should have done this much earlier. But she had to have time to think about it, to remember all the conversations she's overheard, all the Nazi parades through town, to make sure she was right. _And I am right… I think._

"Dunkirk and Potsdam," Courtney states. Dunkirk was the city in France the Nazis were planning to attack. Potsdam was a city close to Berlin where the Nazi army were sending more troops, so many that there was probably a base there. The general nods. After a few more questions about the validity of those cities, she was dismissed.

Courtney walked through the dark camp, headed back to the hospital tent. Then she saw him standing outside. She could see Duncan's fingers, holding a glowing cigarette. Ash stumbled from its edge and lunged and lifted several times until it hit the ground. He breathed out a light cloud of smoke into the night air. Courtney wondered if it was one of the cigarettes she had won from Texas Hold 'Em that he was smoking. Then she mentally slapped herself and decided it didn't matter.

She kept walking and Duncan looked at her out of the corner of his eye as she approached. _Why had he been waiting outside for her? _Courtney glided past him into the hospital tent and into the nurses' bedroom for a good night's sleep that she desperately needed. Hopefully she wouldn't dream of Duncan.

And that wonderful kiss.


	11. Leaving Camp

Duncan stood outside, smoking in the warm summer night air. He just couldn't keep his mind from wandering back to Courtney. _Who kissed who first?_ Then he would scoff and remind himself it didn't matter, and that they both had kissed back. He felt guilty of somehow taking advantage of her, since she was an orphan as of only two and a half weeks ago. She was still distressed, he could tell from her nightmares. She probably just wanted a friend, and here Duncan was, kissing her to the point of breathlessness. _Seriously, where did that kiss come from?_

Suddenly Duncan saw her. Courtney was walking back from wherever she had gone this late at night. He would have guessed she went to the bathroom, except for the fact that she came from the opposite direction. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, taking a drag on his cigarette and trying to distinguish any hidden emotions in her eyes.

But her face was blank.

Courtney silently passed him and went back into the tent. Duncan was genuinely wondering what she had gone out to do. But he simply finished his cigarette, snubbed it out with his boot, and went in the tent. He tossed A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, which he had bought off of Thomas for a handful of cigarettes, under his cot and fell into a much-needed sleep.

The next few days were torture. Courtney had been having more nightmares than ever, often two or even three a night, but ever since that kiss, Duncan hadn't felt welcome back in the nurses' bedroom. What most frustrated him was hearing Courtney cry and whimper in the middle of the night and knowing he couldn't comfort her. Her crying nearly killed him.

Another source of torment was that he and Courtney barely talked, only polite small talk as she would change his shoulder bandages. The rest of her time would be spent with Sam, which made Duncan surprisingly lonely and jealous. He would hear them both talking in German, which pissed Duncan off because he couldn't even tell what they were talking about.

Late one afternoon, Duncan's troop was called out to the courtyard. Duncan stood up from his cot, threw on his camouflaged jacket over the camouflaged pants he was already wearing and jogs out of the hospital tent. Courtney had told him his bullet wound would take approximately three and a half weeks to heal, since it hadn't hit any major arteries or bones or nerves. He'd been through three weeks of recovery and rehab, so just a few more days and he'd be free of the hospital forever.

Free from Courtney forever.

Free from seeing her smile everyday.

Free from comforting her from her nightmares.

And Duncan wasn't sure if he wanted that or not.

Duncan falls in place in line between Travis and Thomas, standing tall and stiff, waiting for the general. Soon General Smith comes out of the tent and salutes his troop. Duncan lifts his right shoulder, cocks his elbow, and rests his flat hand against his eyebrow simultaneously with his troop. He would have smiled for being able to salute again, if not for the fact that you were supposed to keep a blank face when saluting.

The general lowered his salute and the soldiers immediately followed. "Men!" General Smith calls out, pacing in front of them. "We have gotten word that there is a surplus of Nazi soldiers in Potsdam, just southwest of Berlin. The place is probably swarming with the bastards. I'm planning a surprise attack on the base that is, in all likelihood, positioned in Potsdam. It very well may be a suicide mission for all the Nazis that are there. But I am hoping that we'll have the element of surprise on our side. Three other troops will be meeting us there, and with a bit of luck, we can plant bombs around the camp under the cover of darkness. We will attack, and for some reason, if we have to withdraw, we can detonate the bombs."

The general became silent and looked over his troops. "I know this very well may be a suicide mission. I've told you that. But this is our duty to our country, stopping these German bastards from taking over the world, as their insane leader wants to do. For those of you who wish to join me in the attack, please step forward," General Smith commands.

All of the men in Duncan's troop take a step forward.

"Good," General Smith continues, "We leave at sunset." The general salutes the soldiers, and they salute back. The general turns and heads back to his tent, and the soldiers drop their hands to their sides. Only once the general was out of sight did they break from their stations. Duncan looked up at the sun, which was only about forty five minutes away from setting.

Soon Duncan was gripped with panic. _Courtney! What about Courtney?_ What would she do if he was leaving her here? What if she needed her, or… He needed her? How would she cope with her nightmares? How would she learn English?

_"Life is always difficult in proportion to its intensity and reality."_  
**- Edward Howard Griggs**

Duncan slid past the crowd of his fellow soldiers and he heads towards the hospital tent. Inside, Courtney and three other nurses were transferring Sam from his cot onto a stretcher. Apparently the truck had arrived to take him to a larger hospital.

Duncan puts his hand on her elbow and says, "Courtney… I need to talk to you." She turns around and looks at him.

"What do you want, Duncan? I'm busy."

"I _need_ to talk to you," he repeats, with more emphasis, "In private. Come on, follow me." Duncan takes her hand and starts to pull her away, but Courtney stops him.

"No," Courtney replies. Clearly there was an internal battle being raged inside of her, if her unsure eyes were any clue. "I need to help Sam right now."

"With what?" Duncan asks, motioning to the three nurses carrying Sam out of the hospital tent. "They have it under control. _Please_, Courtney, I'm begging you. There's not much time."

Courtney sighed and rolled her eyes. This time, when Duncan tried to pull her out of the hospital tent, she followed him without resisting. He takes her behind the hospital tent on the edge of the forest and behind a thick tree for some privacy.

"Courtney, I'm leaving."

The I-don't-care mask on her face slipped a little, and Duncan could see her worry. "What? Why?" she asks.

"I… can't tell you where I'm going," Duncan answers regretfully. There was a popular saying in the US that went, _Loose lips sink ships. _The same thing applied to soldiers and where they're positioned in Europe. The enemy can never get word of it. Not that Duncan didn't trust Courtney not to say anything, but if she were to be tortured for information, she may unwillingly let it slip. "My troop is being relocated to somewhere else in Germany."

"But… I'll see you again, won't I?" Courtney asked in a whisper. Her eyes welled up and she tried to blink them back. Duncan put his arms around her waist and hugged her. She desperately needed it.

"I don't know, Princess," he answered honestly. He left out the part about his mission possibly being a suicide mission. She didn't need to know that. "I'll miss you, though."

Courtney hugged him tighter, burying her head deeper into his arms. "I'll miss you too, Duncan," she replies. Even though her voice was muffled in his clothing, he could still understand what she said perfectly.

"Listen…," Duncan begins, lifting her chin up so he could look at her, "I'll write to you every day. And I shouldn't be gone for more than two weeks."

Thomas suddenly came around the hospital tent and looked towards the woods. "Duncan?" he calls out.

Duncan dropped his hand from Courtney's face and stepped out of their embrace. "Over here," he calls back, since his friend couldn't see him from behind the thick tree.

"Well, come on, then!" Thomas continues, "We need to get going!"

Duncan looks at Courtney once more, memorizing each detail, and turns to follow Thomas to the courtyard. But before he disappeared around the corner of the hospital tent and into view of the other soldiers, he heard Courtney exclaim, "Duncan!" from behind him.

He turned around just in time to catch her as Courtney jumps into Duncan's arms, kissing him hard. Duncan holds her off the ground with his hands on her hips and spins them in a tight circle to burn off extra velocity from her jump.

Duncan places Courtney back on the ground and they soon break their kiss. "Goodbye," she tells him breathlessly, offering him a small smile.

He smiles back and replies, "Bye, Princess." Duncan turns and heads into the hospital tent, grabs his duffel bag from under his cot, waves goodbye to the soldiers who were awake, and goes out to the courtyard. His troop was already loading up into the olive green truck which would transport them to Potsdam.

Duncan quickly hopped on board and took a seat between Thomas and Travis. He set his duffel bag between his feet and held his helmet in his hands. Taped to the inside was the Polaroid picture of him and Courtney, in the hospital tent. Duncan bit his lip and plopped the helmet on his head. He would see her soon.


	12. Surprise Attack

**Courtney POV**

Late the next day, a letter arrived from Duncan, which probably meant his troop made it to Potsdam and he had gotten a chance to send it. She took it out of the mail cart and left the mess hall, heading to the hospital tent. Courtney sat on her cot and carefully opened up the letter, gliding one fingertip under the flap.

Every time she thought of Duncan, which was quite often, she thought of their kiss. Courtney knew that last kiss was a mistake. Again. But she couldn't help it, what with that forlorn look on Duncan's face and the fact that she wouldn't see him for a few weeks. Then again, there was always the chance he could die… But she wouldn't think about it.

Courtney took the carefully folded letter out of the envelope and she was instantly hit by Duncan's smell. The smell of _him_. Her eyes almost welled up right then and there. She unfolded the letter and began reading:

Dear Princess,

I hope the camp is as fine as the state my troop left it in. Which isn't saying much, considering the horrible food and semi-clean bathrooms. But if you have received this letter, then at least you have your safety.

We arrived in Potsdam after only a minor incident in which the front tire of the truck blew out. We were all thrashed about, but the only real damage was seven of us burned by cigarettes, three with broken fingers, and a delayed trip to Potsdam. We set up a makeshift camp in the middle of the jungle, just all our sleeping bags in a huddle, and sent out a guy to a larger US camp deeper in the jungle. He'd tell them my troop was in the area and of need of shelter. But for now, we're stationed in the jungle. I also sent with him this letter, which I'm hoping you've gotten and it isn't somebody else reading this.

There's also the threat of yellow fever, which we'll probably get a vaccine for once my troop is transferred to the larger camp, because we're thinking one of the enemies will use the disease as biochemical warfare, but we're not sure.

Now, I didn't want to turn this into a sappy love letter, but who am I kidding? As I am writing this, I can see your face perfectly. I miss you so much it hurts. I wish you were here with me, but I know you're safer in the camp. I can't wait to see you again. Just two more weeks, approximately. But I'd better get going, Thomas is bugging me to turn off the light now. We didn't get much sleep last night in the truck due to the blown tire, and we're hoping to catch up on sleep now. Be safe.

Yours,

Duncan

Courtney still stared at the letter even after she was done reading it. _Be safe?_ As if Duncan was perfectly safe out where he was, deep in the jungle somewhere. She stands up and stuffs the letter into the pocket of her nursing uniform and headed into the main room of the hospital tent.

She ignored the shouting coming from outside, which was probably just a troop doing some practice drills out in the courtyard. The drills would usually get pretty loud.

But then Courtney caught the word '_eile_,' which was German for 'hurry.' She turned to look out the tent-flap of a window just as bullets rang through the air. Courtney jumped away from the window and just about ran into Jennifer, who was frantically looking over Courtney's shoulder through the window.

"Invasion!" Jennifer calls to the other nurses, who immediately begin rushing from patient to patient, working on getting the soldiers mobile. At the back of the hospital tent was a tiny air raid shelter that could fit no more than thirty people, which was reserved for the patients. Apparently they'd be using the air raid shelter to hide the wounded soldiers from the attack.

Courtney quickly covered the flap of the makeshift window and closed the entrance flap to the hospital tent. The sounds of yelling to fellow soldiers, boots running on the packed dirt, and whizzing shrapnel all came from outside. It was chaos. Jennifer grabbed Courtney's elbow and nearly tugged her all the way to the back of the hospital tent, near the air raid shelter which was currently being filled with patients.

_"All warfare is based on deception."_  
**- Sun Tzu**

"You have to get out of here," Jennifer exclaims.

"No, I need to help you first!"

"_No_, your safety is our first priority. The other nurses have it handled."

"How'd the Nazis find the camp anyway?" Courtney asks.

"They probably followed the truck that came here to get Sam and waited for a better time to attack. Now, you have to get out of here without being seen," Jennifer tells Courtney with more magnitude than before.

"How? The only way out of this tent is at the front, and the Nazis will definitely see me there."

Jennifer looked around real quick before grabbing a scalpel off a metal tray. With one clean swipe, Jennifer cut a hole in the tent wall. "There," she answers. "Now run!"

Courtney, half out of the tent, looks back at Jennifer. "Where?"

"Just into the woods! And run away from this camp! Don't come back. Just go. Find another place to hide, even if you have to wait in the jungle for the rest of the war," Jennifer tells Courtney.

Courtney nods and prepares to take off before Jennifer yells, "Wait!" She watches as Jennifer runs and grabs some leftovers off of several patients' discarded lunch trays. Jennifer shoves the three bread rolls she managed to collect into Courtney's hands and nods for her to go.

"Thank you," Courtney says gratefully, and hops through the hole in the tent. She hugs the bread rolls against her torso and dashes into the jungle, hoping none of the Nazis saw her leave the camp clearing.

She ran for the next five minutes, hopping over scraggly tree roots, zig-zagging between large tree trunks, navigating around boulders, and parting her way through broad leafy clumps of fern. Eventually she ran out of breath and had to slow her pace down to a walk, but she still headed deeper and deeper into the jungle. In spite of everything, the sounds of the battle could still be heard from the camp she left behind.

Suddenly Courtney felt extremely guilty for just ditching her fellow nurses, as well as the wounded soldiers in the hospital tent. Who knows whether the Nazis outnumbered them or not? And if so, those Americans were as good as dead. There was even the possibility a few of them out be tortured or kept as prisoners of war.

Courtney could only hope the general was smart enough to commit suicide if the Americans were, in fact, outnumbered by the Nazis so that he couldn't be captured and questioned for information.

For now, there was nothing else to do now but move on and hopefully find some sort of shelter. As Jennifer told her, there was no going back. Courtney did some quick math in her head, figuring how far away she could get from the camp in case the Nazis decided to search the surrounding jungle for survivors.

In Berlin, before the whole war started, it would take Courtney around twenty minutes to walk to her school, which was one mile away. It would take her a little longer to walk a mile in the jungle, what with all the underbrush that keeps getting in the way. So a mile of jungle should take more around thirty minutes. Courtney figured at least fifteen or so miles away from the camp would keep her safe. And since it was already two in the afternoon, it should be around 9:30 at night by the time she was done walking fifteen miles.

Courtney let out a puff of air and looked up at the canopy of trees above her. The tree limbs completely blocked the sun, leaving her in cool shade. At least sweating during her fifteen-mile hike wouldn't be much of a problem. But the coolness of the night would probably leave her chilled in her short nurse's uniform… Even though it had long sleeves.

The insects would definitely be a problem, too, as Courtney already figured out after her umpteenth swat at a mosquito. The long sleeves would protect her arms from bug bites, but the short skirt would leave her legs bare. Bug bites she could handle, though, in these conditions. Provided that there were no large spiders, she should be fine.

Another issue would be food. She had three bread rolls, but obviously that would not be enough if she were to hide out for as long as Jennifer suggested she should. Water would be a necessity as well, especially if she was going to be walking for fifteen miles. Courtney would just have to pace herself, apparently.

After another sigh, Courtney increased her pace. The further she got from the camp, the more she could slow down. But for now, she had to get away. And then the hell of survival in the jungle can begin.


	13. The Nazi Base

Duncan was laying on top of his sleeping bag, arms crossed behind his head, helmet and gun placed beside him, staring at the treetops and thinking of the delay last night that got them to Potsdam so late. The olive green truck was on the way to Potsdam when the hiss of a popped tire filled the air. Thomas was telling yet another dirty joke when the driver lost control of the truck. That was one of the things about world war two that astonished Duncan from the moment he entered the army. Day after day after day: the conversation of bullets. Resting men. Cold sweat. The best dirty jokes in the world.

"So this guy walks into the bar and sees a gorgeous blonde sitting on a bar stool all alone, right?" Thomas was saying, "The guy sits down next to her and pulls a small box from his pocket. He opens it and there's a frog inside. It was his pet frog. The blonde says, 'H's cute, but does he do tricks?' The guy says, 'Yeah, he licks pussy.' So after talking with her for several minutes, he convinces her to come with him to his apartment. They get there and she takes all of her clothes off, gets into his bed, and spreads her legs wide. The guy sets the frog right between her legs and it just sits there, not moving at all. The blonde says, 'Well? What's wrong with it?' The frog still hadn't moved yet. So the guy leans over to the frog and says, 'All right, I'm only going to show you how to do this one more time!' "

The soldiers in his troop roared with laughter, then suddenly the truck was rolling over and over. The men swore as they tumbled with the air, light, trash, and tobacco. Outside, the blue sky changed from ceiling to floor as they all scrambled for something to hold. Duncan himself was thrashed about and all common sense was kicked out as instinct kicked in, all of a sudden not caring about anyone else but himself.

When the rolling finally stopped, they were all crowded together against the right-hand wall of the truck, the vehicle tipped over on its side like so, their faces wedged against the filthy uniform next to them. Questions of health were passed around until everybody was deemed okay. The damage: Seven men burned by cigarettes and three with broken fingers.

It took a while for the tire on the truck to be changed, but they eventually made it to Potsdam. His troop set up camp and sent a soldier out to tell the other camp they were in the area and to make room. Then almost instantly after they set out their sleeping bags, everyone was asleep, Duncan included.

Now he'd just woken up from a four-hour nap and the rest of his troop was still asleep. Duncan just wasn't one for sleeping in the jungle. It was way too noisy, too humid, and the bugs were driving him crazy. Duncan groaned and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.

"Attention!" Sergeant Roebuck barks, and everyone snaps awake. When they see what it was that woke them up, they all groan and murmur swear words. "Today we're going to check out the Nazi base just a mile from here. We'll alternate keeping watch on the bastards to be sure they're really clueless as to the fact we're even here. Who wants first watch? Say aye."

Duncan immediately blurts, "Aye."

Anything to pass the time.

Right after Duncan volunteers, so do Thomas and Travis. Duncan looks at his friends and smirk, and they smirk right back. Then Sergeant Roebuck commands, "You'll get in different posts around the base, I don't really care where as long as you're not seen, and report back any suspicious behavior in an hour. Dismissed."

Duncan stands up, grabs his helmet and gun, and heads into the jungle right behind Travis and Thomas. With a quick glance at the Polaroid picture, he plunks the helmet on top of his head and focuses on the task at hand: finding the Nazi base in the midst of the jungle.

On their way into Potsdam, after the tire had been repaired, Sergeant Roebuck had pointed out which direction the Nazi base was in. It was up to the soldiers to remember which direction it was in for future reference. Just due south of their makeshift camp.

The three men trample through the jungle as quickly as they can, before German voices could be heard in the air. Then they change their pace to where they are moving as quietly as a jungle cat; no sounds made. The metal link fence of the Nazi camp could barely be seen through the tree trunks and underbrush. Travis ducks behind a tree and motions for Thomas and Duncan to follow.

_"There is nothing so likely to produce peace _  
_as to be well prepared to meet the enemy."_  
**- George Washington**

Duncan drops to his knees and watches as Travis smears mud across his whole face. "Camouflage," Travis explains in a whisper. Duncan nods and dips his hands into the mud puddle at his knees. He quickly smears the mud across his cheeks, chin, nose, and forehead.

As soon as Thomas finishes covering his face, Duncan grabs a leaf of a nearby plant and slaps it on Thomas' cheek. "Extra camouflage," Duncan whispers with a smirk.

Thomas swipes the foliage off his face and hisses, "Shut up, you dick." Travis and Duncan burst out laughing, then quickly quiet it down to snickering. Thomas stands up, pissed off, and motions to the right. "I'll be over there," he grumbles.

Duncan looks at Travis, who was still laughing a bit, and nods up at the tree above them. Travis nods in understanding and heads off a bit to the left. Duncan straps his gun to a tree branch above his head and starts climbing.

Back home, he would often break into the top window of an office or home or shop by ways of tree climbing. Duncan's motives were very clear, however: he only wanted food, which his parents couldn't provide him enough of. And getting the food from some government organization would make him seem weak, so that's how he resorted to stealing.

The other crimes that came along with it were simply all a part of living in a bad neighborhood and associating with bad people. But actually, those 'bad people' were his friends. The real bad people were the opposing gangs, who kept trying to take what he and his friends had worked so hard to conquer/achieve/obtain, etc.

The main reason Duncan joined the army was to get away from the hell of gang life and into the hell of being a soldier. Some days in the army, Duncan didn't even kill as many people as he had in a day back home. But at least part of being in the army was the three full meals a day and cigarette ration.

But Duncan couldn't think about that right now.

He sat himself down on a high branch with a view and reached down to grab his gun off the lower branch. After settling the gun in his lap, Duncan peered through the tree branches to the camp. Apparently the Nazi soldiers were having marching drills, practicing to march completely on time. Every time the soldiers took a step, it resonated like a gunshot, since there were so many of them.

Duncan sat in the tree for about forty-five minutes more before he heard unusual shouting coming from the camp. He adjusted his position in the tree to get a better view, but to mainly get some blood flow to his numb ass. In the camp, a soldier ran up to the man who looked to be the general. There was some animated talking, and the soldier motioned to somewhere further off in the camp. Duncan craned his neck to see, but whatever it was was out of sight. His guard shift was over, but he had to see who was in the camp first.

Suddenly Duncan saw frantic motion coming from his left and he turned to look at Travis, who clearly saw whatever it was. Travis was sitting behind a tree and looking up at Duncan. _Do you see her?, _Travis mouthed. Duncan shook his head and looked at the camp.

_Her? _Is it Courtney?

A prickle of fear shot through Duncan's body as he tried his hardest to look through the branches. He turned to look at Thomas, to see if he could see whoever it was also. And sure enough, Thomas' eyes were wide open. Duncan could see him involuntarily murmur, _Oh. My. God. _

But Duncan couldn't manage to get Thomas' attention to ask who it was, since Thomas' eyes were locked on the person in the camp. Duncan inched forward a few inches on the tree branch he was sitting on and looked into the camp. Finally, he saw her.

"Holy shit."


	14. Tailing the Nazis

Courtney was about to scream if she unknowingly walked through one more spider web. Not to mention her feet were aching, even in her conservative nurse's shoes. And soon it would be too dark to see because of the heavy shade the jungle trees cast, even though it was only 7:04 according to her watch, which means she's only walked approximately ten miles.

She bit her lip and looked around her. She had walked into a semi-clearing, only three feet by three feet of low weeds, which was basically as good as it gets in the jungle. Courtney sat down on a flat-ish rock in the middle of the clearing and looked down at the three bread rolls in her lap.

Two of the bread rolls were flat from being squeezed in her hands, and the third one was in pretty good condition besides missing a bite in it from when she got hungry an hour ago. Courtney took the roll that already had a bite in it and ripped it carefully in half, eating that portion while looking nervously all around her. She kept seeing figures in the shadows, but it never turned out to be anything.

The bugs have begun chirping, croaking, clicking, whatever the bugs do. And it was extremely loud. Just thinking that all those insects were out there scared the shit out of her. But it would be best just to not think about it, or else she would be too paranoid to fall asleep.

As for sleeping… Courtney would just have to lay on the ground. And to keep the food from being eaten by bugs or animals while she was sleeping, she'd have to wrap it in something to protect it. Courtney stood up and carefully set the bread on the rock as she took off her nurse's uniform. Then she peeled off the white tank top she was wearing underneath that and put the uniform back on.

Courtney wrapped the bread tightly in her tank top, leaving no space for any bugs to crawl in. She sets the wrapped-up bread on the rock and carefully sits down in the weeds. Suddenly she was hit with a wave of exhaustion. Then she jumps as a bird squawks somewhere in the jungle, and the exhausted feeling passes.

She rests her head in her arms and struggles to fall asleep with all the jungle sounds around her. Courtney's jaw even began to ache from clenching it so hard with paranoia. Her eyes flitted back and forth between the dark trees all around her, waiting for something to jump out and grab her.

Eventually she couldn't take much more insomnia and she fell into a fitful sleep, waking up and slowly falling asleep several times throughout the night. The next morning, however, Courtney woke up to find the jungle bright with sunshine. She looked up and saw the opening in the canopy of tree branches above her head.

_"Improve your opportunities; _  
_Every hour lost now is a chance of future misfortune." _  
**- Anonymous**

Then she remembered she had more walking to do, five miles to be exact, which should take around two and a half hours. Once she walked those five miles, however, she could begin setting up camp and looking for food. Speaking of food, Courtney's stomach growled loudly. She flinched and grabbed a half-eaten roll out of her makeshift tank top bag.

Courtney only had two bread rolls left. And if she was eating a half in the morning and a half in the evening, she only had food for two days. What then? Courtney stood up, grabbed her wrapped-up food, and began walking in the same direction as yesterday.

After a little more than an hour later, thirst began burning her throat. She coughed, since her dry throat had begun to itch. She knew that, in a healthy state, a person could live for about five days without water in the shade. Less in direct sunlight. Lucky for her all the treetops blocked the sun.

Lifting her leg high over a thick fallen tree, something dug into her hip. After she had crossed over the fallen tree, Courtney held her tank top and bread underneath her arm as she dug into her pocket. She almost forgot to breathe when she pulled out Duncan's letter. She didn't know she'd taken it along; she thought she'd accidentally dropped it somewhere in the hospital camp.

Courtney momentarily stopped walking as she read over her favorite part of the letter, the part at the bottom: "_Now, I didn't want to turn this into a sappy love letter, but who am I kidding? As I am writing this, I can see your face perfectly. I miss you so much it hurts. I wish you were here with me, but I know you're safer in the camp. I can't wait to see you again. Just two more weeks, approximately_."

If only Duncan knew. He was probably expecting a letter back from her. Or maybe not… since his troop was still positioned in the middle of the jungle. As for the part about seeing her again in two weeks? She could very much be dead by then if she didn't get water within a few days.

Courtney folded the letter back up, and returned it to her pocket. She had just started walking again when she heard rustling in the brush a far to her right. She quickly dove to the ground and rolled underneath a bush with large leaves, completely forgetting to worry about bugs. She couldn't risk being seen by a German walking through the jungle, which was highly unlikely, since she was so deep in the jungle. What if it was some kind of dangerous animal?

There was the crash of foliage being shoved aside as whoever it was got closer. Courtney decided to sneak a peek to ease her curiosity. She lowered her head to the ground and peeked through the leaves to the other side of the bush. Eight boots heavily stomped by, which would mean four people. Between the second and third person, however, came white shoes stained with the brown dirt of the jungle.

She let out a silent gasp as she recognized the white shoes as nurse's shoes, similar to hers. Who was it? Courtney leaned forward a bit more and nearly cried out as she saw Jennifer being dragged along by her bound wrists. She had known that the camp had been attacked by Nazis, but she had no idea that the Nazis had succeeded. Nazi soldiers led her further through the jungle, right past Courtney's hiding spot.

Soon they were out of sight, and Courtney deemed it safe enough to come out from under the bush. Quickly, but quietly, running through the jungle, she couldn't let them get too far away. Because Courtney was going to follow them back to their military base, no matter the cost.


	15. Planning the Ambush

**(Author's Note: Yes, probably the only author's note I'll ever put in this story besides the one saying 'The End!' But it's not the end, so don't fret. I just had to apologize for how long it took me to write this, since my computer crashed and I lost everything and I was waaay too pissed off to write anything for a while. Oh, and school started. Yay! Now on will the story, no?)**

* * *

**Duncan POV**

Duncan stared through the foliage at Jennifer, who was standing in front of the Nazi general and with her hands were tied behind her back. He silently climbed down the tree and jogged over to Thomas. Duncan put a hand on Thomas' shoulder and murmured, "We need to get back to camp. To tell them what's going on."

Thomas stood to a crouch in a daze. His gaze was unfocused, and as they met up with Travis and started running back to the camp, Duncan caught Thomas constantly glancing back in the direction of Jennifer and the Nazi camp. "You okay?" Duncan asks.

Thomas lets out a heavy sigh and clenches his jaw. "You should know," he replies, in a voice barely above a whisper.

And Duncan did know. Thomas was in love with Jennifer, whether she knew it or not. And seeing her at the Nazi's mercy was pretty much the worst punch in the face a guy could get. Since Duncan did know. He did.

Because seeing Jennifer in that Nazi base meant that their old camp had been invaded. And since Courtney was in that camp, and so obviously Jewish, she could very much be dead already. Duncan lifted his helmet off his head and peeked inside at the picture. Just in seeing that picture, he could hear her laugh, her cry, and her voice just as if she were right in front of him.

Duncan plops his helmet back on his head and catches up to Thomas and Travis, whom he had fallen temporarily behind. He had to believe Courtney was still alive. She had to be. She was strong, and courageous… Duncan couldn't, _wouldn't _believe that she was dead. Even though his throat constricted at just the thought of her.

Eventually the three of them burst into the clearing their troop had occupied and Travis immediately headed over to Sergeant Roebuck. He began murmuring to the sergeant in a hushed tone; the only part of the conversation Duncan managed to overhear was the not-so-soft "Dammit!" that Sergeant Roebuck exclaimed.

Finally, Sergeant Roebuck ordered, "Men!" and all the soldiers quickly stood at attention. He efficiently filled them in on the situation they were in then continued, "You all know what we have to do now. And obviously this is going to be a top secret mission. Do you know what 'top secret' is?"

The troop was deathly quiet until one man, Duncan couldn't match his voice to a face, called out, "Yessir. It's the kind of mission where you're rewarded medals, but they give 'em to your relatives."

Sergeant Roebuck pursed his lips at that obvious death threat, then replied, "Well… That's one way to put it. Are you men up for it?"

"YESSIR!" the troop thunders, especially because they knew that there could very well be prisoners in that Nazi camp.

"Good," Sergeant Roebuck says, relieved, as if they would've actually said no. He then issues two soldiers to run to the nearest Allie camp for backup, and bombs, and orders three others to take up guard duty. "We attack at dusk."

_"What the hell is going on? Cruelest dream, reality. _  
_Chances thrown, nothing's free. Longing for, used to be. _  
_Still it's hard, hard to see. Fragile lives, shattered dreams."_  
**- Kids Aren't Alright by The Offspring**

Simultaneously, they all look up at the sky towards the sun, which was about an hour away from setting. The two soldiers glance at each other, then start sprinting through the jungle to be able to get to the Allie camp on time for the backup to get here.

The other three soldiers leave to go to their guard posts until the attack, when the rest of the troop would join them. Meanwhile, the soldiers sit around starting a card game or getting one last nap until the ambush. Duncan started a poker game between him, Thomas, Travis, and a few others. It could very well be their last.

Sergeant Roebuck's plan, as he had explained to all of them just a few minutes prior, was that troops from a few other Allie camps were going to meet them here in the woods for the attack. Then they would surround the Nazi camp and ambush them as a few others kept guard to watch for Nazi backup, to give them time to retreat so they wouldn't end up outnumbered. Most of the Nazis should be injured or tired from the attack on their old camp, so they should be fairly easy to ambush. Most likely.

A third of the troops would set out in search of the POWs, otherwise known as Prisoners of War. Another third would plant timed bombs in strategic places around the camp, while the last third would just try to keep back the Nazis.

"Okay, men," announces Sergeant Roebuck, interrupting Duncan's third poker game, "It's getting close to time. Let's split up into groups." He looks behind him into the woods, clearly worried about the Allies arriving on time. "Those who want to plant bombs, head to the east side of the clearing. Those who want to search for POWs, head to the west side. The other Allie troop will take care of the Nazis."

As if on cue, a man in uniform stepped into the clearing and saluted Sergeant Roebuck. "Sergeant Crooke reporting for duty," he announced as the extra troop streamed into the clearing. The second troop was nearly twice as big as Duncan's.

"Perfect," Sergeant Roebuck replied, saluting Sergeant Crooke. "Your troop will be in charge of just attacking the Nazis in their camp. My men have been given more specific instructions."

Sergeant Crooke nodded and motioned toward five of his troops who were carrying multiple satchels. "Two of your soldiers who came to ask for assistance also requested some explosives?"

"Just have them distribute them to my men on the east side of this clearing. I'm planning on blowing this camp up to the point where there is no trace of a Nazi ever being there," Sergeant Roebuck says, and the five men start handing out the precious satchels to all the men. One satchel was left over, however, and was handed to Sergeant Roebuck to decide what to do with it.

Sergeant Roebuck just hands the satchel over to Duncan, even though he was on the POW side of the clearing. "Plant these explosives when it's time," the sergeant commands, "Then you can look for the captives."

Duncan bites the inside of his cheek, disappointed he wouldn't be able to look for Jennifer and possibly Courtney or whoever else had been captured the entire time of the attack, but takes the satchel nevertheless. "Yessir," he answers.

"Should we head out, then?" Sergeant Roebuck asks the other commander.

"Lead the way," Sergeant Crooke replies with a nod.

In a few seconds, both sergeants were leading the two-hundred-some soldiers through the jungle in the direction of the Nazi base. With a few hand motions, Sergeant Roebuck gestures for the soldiers to split up and surround the camp. Duncan, Travis, and Thomas along with a large group of other soldiers start heading to the right to head around to the back of the camp where they would wait for the signal to attack.

Duncan and Thomas marched through the jungle side by side, just out of view of the Nazis in their base. Only in certain clear areas could they get glimpses of cold gray metal fencing. "Listen, Thomas…," Duncan begins, "If anything happens to me, I want you to be the one to tell Courtney I love her."

Thomas nods solemnly and replies, "Same for Jennifer and I, if we manage to rescue her in time."

Duncan nods too. "Let's just be sure we survive this thing for the both of us."

"Good plan."


	16. Led to the Nazi Camp

**Courtney POV**

Courtney followed the Jennifer and the Nazi soldiers through the forest. She wouldn't dare to get close enough to be seen if she mistakenly made a loud noise. Instead, she kept back just enough that she could see flashes of clothing between the trees so that she would know the general direction they were going in.

Eventually she stopped in front of a large bush, crouching between the shrubbery. In front of her, the Nazis were approaching a ten-foot tall gray chain-link fence that led into their camp. The gate slowly swung open, after the guards recognized the troops as their own.

One Nazi gave Jennifer a good shove and she stumbled a bit, her hands tied behind her back which made it difficult to regain her balance, then she walked dutifully into the camp. The Nazis followed her in and the gate swung shut behind them.

Through the chain-link, Courtney watched the Nazis lead Jennifer over to a commander-looking personnel who was standing in the middle of the courtyard. Apparently a Nazi troop was holding drills, and the general wasn't happy at being interrupted. He _did _look happy to see Jennifer though.

Courtney was too far away to hear what they were saying, yet she did see one of the Nazis motion towards a large tent close to the gate they had come in. The Nazi general nodded, and the Nazis led Jennifer towards the building. The troop in the courtyard continued with their drills as normal.

The two Nazis opened the door to the building and Courtney got a glimpse of a couple more American nurses tied up in there. She gasped and gritted her teeth as the door shut behind them. Courtney sat in the bushes for a while longer, contemplating how to save Jennifer and the others.

She obviously couldn't save them herself, yet she had no idea where to get help.

Courtney bit her lip and figured that to save them, she should save herself first. Keep herself out of trouble, find help, then eventually get them help. If they were still alive by then. But the first step of keeping herself out of trouble was to put a little bit of distance between herself and the Nazi camp. Courtney should still stay relatively close to the camp, yet she shouldn't be this close where she could possibly be seen.

So she stood to a crouch and navigated her way deeper into the jungle, stepping over rocks and logs and muddy puddles of stillwater. Eventually Courtney found a good place to hide out for the moment, a mossy flat rock behind a thick tree and tall bush. If she stood on the rock on her tiptoes, she could see the camp gate over the bush. Other than that, she was perfectly hidden.

She sat on the mossy rock and tore a piece of bread in half, then in half again. She didn't know how long she'd be hiding there, and figured by eating the bread in fourths instead of halves would be smarter. Even after eating her meager portion of bread, Courtney's stomach was still twisting in tight knots, which wasn't surprising. Half a bread roll a day wasn't good sustenance, but she'd have to make do.

Soon Courtney started thinking about Jennifer again. If she hadn't gotten Courtney out of the camp when she did, Courtney could very well be a prisoner as well. How was it possible for a petite, non-athletic Jewish girl to rescue multiple prisoners from a high-security Nazi camp?

Answer: It wasn't possible.

_"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. _  
_Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."_  
**- Anonymous**

Courtney's only hope was to somehow find Americans to help invade their camp and save them. But, seeing as she was a German, not very many Americans could trust her. Even if she _was _Jewish.

Maybe it was possible that Jennifer and the other nurses were already thinking up an escape plan, and Courtney would somehow meet up with them in the jungle? She had… no food. So scratch that.

Courtney would be no help. To anyone. She sighed and rested her chin in her hand. She wasn't sure how long she'd been thinking of escape strategies for Jennifer, but suddenly it was dusk. She must not have noticed the sun setting. Courtney swatted at a mosquito on her dirt-smeared calf and scowled.

It was a very self-absorbed thing to be thinking, but Courtney would do pretty much anything for a nice, hot shower. Anything to get this grime off of her. Mud was splattered up her legs from splashing through mud muddles, and her hands were coated with dried dirt. Her legs and arms were both covered with itchy bug bites and her legs were starting to get prickly from not shaving in two days. Her white nurse's uniform, if she could even call it that anymore, was brown and green from mud and grass stains.

Courtney's eyes locked on a puddle of water a few meters off. It was shallow, but couldn't see the bottom for the cloudiness of the water. Tall weeds were growing out of it, and bugs swarmed around it for a drink. She momentarily thought of drinking it herself, since she was so desperate for a drink, but she shook that thought off as quickly as it had come. She'd heard stories of dehydrated people who were craving water so bad that they'd drink nearly anything, but end up poisoning themselves in the process.

She shook her head. Not worth it.

Just as she was laying down to fall asleep, since it was too dark to see now, Courtney suddenly heard footsteps in the distance, and she froze. Maybe she was just imagining things. Hopefully. Hallucinations were common if you were dehydrated, right?

But no, she heard it again. Coming from behind the tree, in the direction of the Nazi camp. Courtney curled herself into a tight ball, making herself as small of a target as possible. Maybe whoever was there wouldn't even see her and move on.

The longer she sat there, though, it sounded like a large amount of people. She heard murmuring, but couldn't make out the words. A Nazi troop searching the jungle for people who escaped their attack on the last camp? Courtney couldn't stop her terrified shivering.

A few minutes longer, and it sounded like the people were keeping their distance, staying close to the camp's fence. Some Nazis patrolling the border? It didn't make sense that there would be that many of them, however.

Eventually curiosity got to Courtney and she stood on the rock, raising herself up on tiptoes. Then she saw them. Dozens of men crouching in the brush, possibly a hundred. They stretched all the way around the fence, like they were surrounding it.

Surrounding it! Exactly! Excitement shot through Courtney and she couldn't help grinning like an idiot. They were Americans! They had to be! Why else would they be surrounding the camp?

But she had to get a closer look to be sure.

Courtney snuck off the rock and around the large bush. She stood behind a smaller tree, sucking in her stomach to not be seen. The Americans would probably shoot her in the dark because they couldn't see she was Jewish. Courtney peeked around the tree.

The men were motioning to each other and talking in such low voices she couldn't make out the words. Courtney slinked around the tree to a small bush even closer. From here, she could definitely tell they were speaking English.

Glancing out from behind the bush, Courtney scanned the soldiers. A dim light was being cast out from the camp, and a few faces Courtney recognized from the last camp. If they were here, then so would Duncan! Once again, excitement flooded her and Courtney felt absolutely elated.

She frantically searched the crowd of men but was unable to see Duncan anywhere. Her excitement slowly started to fade. Courtney was seeing men that she didn't even recognize from the old camp. Maybe she only _thought _she recognized some of them.

Still, they were probably here to rescue Jennifer and the others, so for that, she was grateful.

Suddenly, a loud roaring sound came from the Americans. They tore out of the jungle, screaming and yelling and running for the fence. Courtney watched as the men quickly climbed up the fence with ease and hopped into the Nazi camp, sprinting for cover before the Nazis came.

And boy, did they come.

Nazis ran out of the buildings, fully armed and ready for battle. The Americans, who were surrounding them, easily took down bunches of them with a rainfall of bullets. Most of the Nazis survived, however, and made it to hiding places to attack the Americans, most of which were still climbing over the fence and some were still in the jungle.

Several Americans were shot on their way up the fence, their limp bodies falling back to the ground with a plop. Courtney watched the fence-jumpers, and a jolt shot through her as she thought she saw Duncan far off.

Yes, that was definitely him.

He was speedily climbing up the fence, a gun slung across his back. Courtney recognized his thick black hair and sharp jaw line. Even from here, his blue eyes looked like ice. And beside him were Thomas and Travis, following him over the fence.

Courtney nearly vibrated with delight. Duncan was alive, right in front of her eyes. He jumped over the fence and sprinted behind a shack, and Courtney lost sight of him. Somehow Courtney had to get to him before the Nazis did.


	17. This is Hell

**(Author's Note: Alright guys… Moment of truth. I'm back. Maybe not forever, maybe permanently. I really don't know. Thanks for those of you who will continue to read this story despite the looong lapse in updates. If it helps, reread the story? I can bet you forgot all about it. Well. Onwards, shall we?)**

Duncan POV

From his left, soldiers starting yelling and dashing towards the fence, which meant that the signal had been given. Duncan plows out of the jungle, shouting along with them, running for the tall chain-link fence. He slings his gun over his shoulder by the strap and starts rapidly climbing up the fence. Out of his peripheral vision, Duncan saw Thomas and Travis on both sides of him.

By now, the Nazis have realized they were being attacked and had started to retaliate. Duncan tried to ignore the aching pain in his shoulder as he climbed up. Meanwhile, his men were dropping like flies off the fence, due to the shots suffered from the Nazis.

Somehow, Duncan reached the top of the fence without being shot and he straddles the top of the fence. He throws the other leg over then dangles from his hands and drops to the ground on the other side. Immediately after he hits the ground, Duncan starts sprinting for cover, grabbing his gun from behind his back. He was now in enemy territory, and it was time to find Courtney.

Ducking behind a ramshackle kind of hut probably used for storing simple tools such as shovels and rope, he heard a nagging voice at the back of his head reminding him that Courtney could very well be dead. Ignoring the voice, Duncan looks behind him at Thomas and Travis, who were also huddled at the back of the hut. Now that Duncan knew his back was covered, he peered out from behind the hut to find a target.

Instead, he managed to sight a grenade flying through the air and plopping into the dirt just a few yards away. "Potato masher!" Duncan thundered at the top of his voice. Immediately his Allied troops around him dove to the ground as the German grenade exploded, sending dirt and dust into the air which blocked their view.

"Where'd the sun go?" Thomas joked.

"There is no sun anymore. We died, and this is hell," Duncan replied morosely.

"Oh, okay. Thanks for clearing that up."

Duncan peeked from behind the shack to begin fighting. Several Nazis were crouched at random hiding places around the camp, and seeing how many there were just in the small section Duncan was in scared the shit out of him. Immediately he raised his gun and began aiming at the Nazi closest to him. One bullet shot just underneath their ear and they are dead. Duncan knew that for a fact. Head shots had too high of a chance of being deflected due to their helmets. But neck shots? Worked every time.

Two, three, four Nazis killed already. Duncan was picking them off like flies, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he would be discovered. Not to mention he still had a bomb to plant.

_"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."_

**- Oscar Wilde**

Duncan dashed across to a larger building and squatted against the wall. He had to crouch with his knees bent in order to not be seen through the window, which was right above his head. He pauses for a second to listen to the gunfire around him then judging none was dangerously close to him, he stood and peered through the window.

The building was completely empty of people, but entirely full of tables, chairs, and other furniture. Duncan figured it was the mess hall and dashed to the building next to the mess hall. This building was a bit smaller and had only one window, way up near the roof, unreachable even by Duncan.

He turns and waves over Thomas, who nods at his friend and finishes the shot he was on. Thomas sprints over to Duncan, who motions up at the window. "Dude, boost me up. I need to check this out," Duncan orders, and Thomas webs his fingers together. Stepping into Thomas' hands, Duncan is boosted high enough to look into the window.

Inside was a huge arrangement of different artillery and various weapons. Duncan steps down and nods at the building. "Full of ammo," he reports, digging into his satchel for the makings of the bomb.

"I'll watch your back," Thomas replies, trotting behind a tent with a perfect view of the side of the ammunition building. Meanwhile, Duncan squeezes along the side of the building, trying to stay out of view.

Duncan swings open the door to the ammunition building and immediately exclaims, "Don't shoot!" Through the window, he had seen a fellow soldier also setting up a bomb. The soldier spins around, gun at the ready, and relaxes once he sees who was there.

"Glad it's you," he admits, "I wasn't sure if one bomb could blow this hellhole up. So put yours over on that wall."

Duncan follows the man's hand to the far wall, and gets on his knees to assemble the bomb. His fingers fumble with the tie to open the satchel and he dumps out the necessities. He easily assembles the explosive and positions it on a shelf. He pinches the bar where the explosives on the inside will slowly combine, giving the Americans just an hour to exterminate the Nazi camp before it goes up in flames.

Job completed, Duncan sneaks out of the ammunition building and jogs towards Thomas, making sure no Nazis were aware of him. However, when Duncan passes a large stack of crates out of view of Thomas, a gunshot goes off and he feels something pull at his uniform. Spinning around, Duncan slams the butt of his gun into the Nazi's head.

The Nazi immediately collapses, dead or unconscious, Duncan didn't know, so he fires a bullet into his chest to make sure. He then sprints over to Thomas and ducks behind yet another shed before their cover could be blown. Thomas' eyes were wide, since he was clearly unaware that there had even been a Nazi hiding there. "Damn!" Thomas exclaims, "That went over like a fart in church. Duncan, man, I thought you were a goner for a sec."

"I almost _did_ die, Thomas, you son of a bitch," Duncan snaps, just a bit shaken due to the experience. He looks down at himself, but the tear in his uniform was just from a bullet graze. There was only a little blood from a scratch, but no hole. "And you know, her face was the very first thing that came into my mind."

"At least she's keeping you alive, well, in theory," Thomas answered, not having to ask who the girl was that Duncan was referring to. There was a moment of silence until Thomas continued, "I'm going to check all the buildings on the left for the prisoners. You can check the right."

Duncan nods and holds his gun at the ready. He heads to the right and methodically checks in the windows for American prisoners and a special German beauty. Some buildings did not have windows, however, in which case he had to carefully enter and hopefully not come across a large group of Nazis. So far he was lucky and every building was empty.

Just as he crouched behind yet another building, Duncan could faintly hear a woman's voice. He quickly turned every which way, but could not find the source of it. Eventually Duncan resumes his search for the prisoners of war.

Courtney POV

Courtney quickly runs through the forest towards the direction Duncan went. She stayed in the woods, however, careful not to approach the fence too close in case she was to be spotted. Eventually she got to the section of woods where Duncan had probably been hiding, and Courtney looks through the metal diamonds of the chain-link fence trying to find him.

Duncan had clearly moved deeper into the Nazi camp, since Courtney could find no sign of him. From the commotion she was hearing in the camp, she could tell that the Americans were trying to invade some of the buildings in the center of the camp. Momentarily, Courtney wondered what the Americans were looking for.

Eventually she decided it didn't matter, and that she should be lucky that the Americans were keeping the Nazis busy on the inside of the camp, because that meant one thing. Courtney would be able to sneak into the Nazi camp and find help. Then again, she could also find her way into a grave, but she decided it was worth the risk.

_"War doesn't make boys men, it makes men dead."_

**- Ken Gillespie**

Courtney sprinted towards the fence and began climbing. The metal dug into the sensitive flesh on the bottom of her feet. By now, she's long forgotten the point at which she lost her shoes. Her arms shook with the effort of climbing the fence, mostly due to the lack of nutrition she's gotten the past few days.

At the top of the fence, Courtney had to hike up her nurse's dress in order to fling one leg over to the other side. For once, she was glad she was alone since any witnesses to that sight would have caused her major embarrassment. The barbed wire scratched her thighs and her heart sped up as her dress got caught. Courtney managed to untangle her dress, however, and quickly climbed down into the camp.

Once her feet hit the soft dirt ground, Courtney adjusted her dress and immediately dashed for cover behind one of the sheds. Her heart began to race, since all this gunfire around her was bringing back memories of her parents and how close to death she could really be. Shaking it off, she thought of her mission: Finding an American to get her help.

Courtney was momentarily stumped at which way she should go. It was obvious the Americans were closing in on the center of the camp, but if she tried to go there as well, she would surely die, especially without a weapon in her possession. If only she could find an American who was straggling behind, at the outskirts of the camp…

She inched forward, peeking out from behind the shed. Courtney knew nothing about war, just the one goal of not getting killed. Luckily, there was nobody in sight, due to the larger buildings blocking her view of the courtyard in the center of the camp, where the gunfire was being sounded.

She continued on, creeping on her tip-toes to the right, hoping that by traveling counter-clockwise around the camp that she could find some help. Courtney stopped, pressed against yet another shack, as she heard some rustling noises. Footsteps, maybe? Immediately her heartbeat kicked into overdrive, and she froze.

After that, however, she heard nothing else. There was a window high above her head, and Courtney decided to check in the shack to be sure there wasn't a group of Nazis seeking shelter in there. Who knew, the noise she heard could have even been caused by the Americans.

Courtney slowly hoisted herself onto a crate right next to her. She kneeled and put her fingers onto the dirty windowsill. Before she peeked into the window, however, she heard a similar scuffling noise. This time it seemed as if it came from outside the shack.

Not even having time to turn around and react, Courtney was roughly grabbed from behind and she instinctively let out a blood-curdling scream. Strong arms wrapped around her torso, roughly holding her captive and immobile. Courtney craned her neck back to see the blonde hair and brown uniform of a Nazi soldier. She began hyperventilating as something cold and sharp was held to her neck, right underneath her jaw and pressed to her jugular vein.

The Nazi was muttering viciously right next to her head, but with all the blood pounding in her ears, she was unable to make out what he was saying. Suddenly the door of the shack was whipped open and two soldiers leaped out, guns at the ready.

Courtney's gaze was immediately drawn to Duncan, who must have been ushered outside by all the commotion. "Duncan! Duncan!" Courtney exclaimed, eyes filling with tears as she writhed against the Nazi.

"Halten sie!" the Nazi yelled at her. _Hold still! _

Duncan and the other American soldier stood frozen, guns still up and at ready. There was nothing they could do, because if they tried anything, the Nazi would surely kill Courtney in one foul swipe of his blade.

The other American muttered something and he slowly lowered his gun, clearly recognizing that Courtney was a Jew. He repeated what he said with a little more vengeance, and slowly Duncan lowered his gun as well. By the overwhelmed look on Duncan's face, he knew there was nothing he could do but listen to the Nazi's orders.


End file.
